A 44-year-old mother living with incurable cancer caught coronavirus this month which she fears was because she kept working on a supermarket till during England’s second lockdown.
Mel Khaled, who lives in Walthamstow in East London and shielded during the first wave of the crisis in the spring because she has breast cancer, was diagnosed with the virus two weeks ago.
Mrs Khaled, unable to stay at home this time because her employer didn’t offer her furlough, is sure she caught the virus by going to work because her three children tested negative and her husband works from home.
Her local MP, Stella Creasy, has now called on the Government to give more financial help to people who are clinically vulnerable to Covid and not offered furlough. She said Britons with serious health conditions should not have to ‘choose between their lives or their livelihoods’.
Ms Creasy told MailOnline the Government should have ‘explicit protection’ in place for vulnerable people – who face a higher risk of dying of Covid-19 – so they aren’t forced to work when they should be shielding.
The Labour MP raised the predicament with Boris Johnson in Parliament earlier this month – before Mrs Khaled caught coronavirus – when the PM said she ‘should be entitled to furlough’. The furlough scheme, however, is a choice for employers and is not enforced.
Unions told MailOnline many workers are being put in ‘impossible situations’ where they fall through the cracks of Government support and have to keep working even when it’s unsafe. They said employers are expected to look after their staff, and that ministers must urgently change the rules on statutory sick pay.
It comes as England prepares to leave national lockdown next week but will need many more months of local restrictions which could leave people in the worst-hit areas facing tough decisions between isolating to protect their health and working to provide for their families.
Statistics from Public Health England suggested that supermarkets are one of the top places visited by people who test positive for coronavirus, with almost a fifth of confirmed cases having been to a store shortly before they were diagnosed.
Mel Khaled, 44 (pictured middle, wearing a red jumper, beside her husband and three children) caught coronavirus in mid-November and is convinced she contracted it at her job at a supermarket because her children tested negative
Labour MP Stella Creasy raised Mrs Khaled’s predicament in Prime Minister’s Questions at the start of this month when Boris Johnson said clinically vulnerable people ‘should work from home’
Mrs Khaled, originally from Cyprus, was diagnosed with coronavirus on November 17, 12 days into England’s second national lockdown.
Up until that point during lockdown she had continued going to her job two days a week at one of the UK’s ‘big four’ supermarkets where she worked on the checkouts.
None of the four biggest chains – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons – have used the furlough scheme during the pandemic, according to The Times.
Mrs Khaled said the company she works for – which she chose not to name – had not offered her furlough or paid time off, even though she was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer this year, after first having the disease 10 years ago, and was having chemotherapy at the time.
She would have been eligible for statutory sick pay – worth a maximum of £95.85 per week – but did not receive the letter advising her to shield before catching the virus.
Bosses had given her a face mask, hand sanitiser and a plastic screen to try and protect her while she was working.
But she is convinced she caught the virus while at work because nobody else in her household – her husband or her three children – tested positive.
Mrs Khaled luckily did not become seriously ill with Covid-19 and is self-isolating at home with a mild cough – she has since tested negative for the virus and expects to recover.
Her chemotherapy had to be paused because of the positive result and her condition puts her in a high-risk group for severe Covid-19 because the treatment weakens her immune system.
The cancer, although it can’t be cured, has not been diagnosed as terminal but Mrs Khaled must continue to have treatment to keep it under control.
Her chemotherapy can’t continue until she tests negative for coronavirus twice in a row.
‘I can’t blame anybody for me catching it [coronavirus],’ Mrs Khaled told MailOnline, adding that she worried she had passed it on to elderly customers visiting her till.
‘I didn’t feel safe but I was behind a screen so it was as safe a place as it could be. I wasn’t face-to-face with the customers and had a gel next to me so I was constantly gelling my hands.
‘There isn’t any other place I would have caught it unless my children brought it home but they’ve been healthy and happy.’
She carried on working because she had used annual leave and sick pay to help her shield at home during the first lockdown in the spring.
Mrs Khaled, pictured with her five-year-old son, has breast cancer for the second time and has been told it can’t be cured
This time around, Mrs Khaled said she wasn’t offered a way to stay at home and was certain she would lose her job if she simply didn’t turn up for work.
Although staff can be furloughed and have most of their pay covered by the Government in some circumstances, this decision must be taken by the employer and is not the worker’s right. Companies are not obliged to offer to furlough employees.
‘It felt really unfair because if I wanted to sit at home I’d have to give up my job,’ she said.
‘Why do I have to make that decision? It’s a decision between my health and my job.’
On one occasion, Mrs Khaled said, a customer got a phone call from his boss while he was at the checkout and was told he needed to self-isolate because a co-worker had tested positive for coronavirus.
‘It was very scary,’ she said. ‘He was telling his wife and I was sat in the middle and had touched every single item he put on the belt.’
Labour MP Stella Creasy, who is Mrs Khaled’s local MP and told Boris Johnson about her problem in Prime Minister’s Questions on November 2, has called for financial protection for people who are on the ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ shielding list.
Mr Johnson replied at the time: ‘I would like to study the case that [Ms Creasy] mentions because, what we’re saying to those who are clinically vulnerable, is that they should not go to work, they should work from home.
‘And I would be grateful if she would send me the details of her case so that we can establish exactly what help she’s entitled to – because she should be entitled to furlough.’
Ms Creasy followed up her House of Commons appearance with a letter but said she hasn’t heard back from the PM since.
The Walthamstow MP told MailOnline: ‘What’s the point in sending people these letters telling them to shield if you don’t put in place a system to help them do it?
‘It feels like Boris Johnson has forgotten the millions of people who are clinically vulnerable but don’t have the support to be able to stay safe, so are having to choose between going to work or putting their health first.
‘There are many people who are not going to be prioritised for a vaccine so could be living with this risk for several months more.
‘I’m desperately worried for Mel that her worst fears have come true, and she is not the only person in this position.
‘The Prime Minister didn’t seem to be able to get his head around the fact that people can’t work a checkout from home.
‘The Government should have given explicit protection to people who are clinically vulnerable, otherwise the [shielding] letters are not worth the paper they’re printed on.’
Unions have repeatedly called for more Government support for workers during the pandemic, particularly those who can’t do their jobs from home.
GMB’s national secretary, Rehana Azam, said: ‘This is yet another example where workers are being put in an impossible situation.
‘Whether they take time off sick and lose pay or are made to come to work by an unsupportive employer, it’s a lose-lose situation for thousands of families across the country.
‘The truth is that many workers are falling through the cracks from the Chancellor’s job support scheme. That’s why GMB has called for workers’ pay to be underwritten by the government where for a legitimate reason, employers can’t pay full sick pay.’
Public Health England data suggests that supermarkets are one of the places most often visited by people who later test positive for coronavirus (Pictured: People queuing outside a supermarket in London in March)
Usdaw, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, told MailOnline: ‘We expect employers to safeguard their staff and support them through this appalling pandemic, especially if they have a serious underlying condition.
‘We have also called on the Government to change Statutory Sick Pay, so that it reflects a person’s normal average earnings, to ensure that the lowest paid can afford to take necessary time-off for illness, self-isolation or shielding.
‘Any Usdaw member who has concerns about their health and work conditions should contact their rep immediately and we will seek to resolve any issues.’
And Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, yesterday called for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to use this week’s budget as an opportunity to ‘improve statutory sick pay so that those who need to isolate can afford to do so’.
Mel Khaled’s case illustrates a gulf between furlough and working from home, where many vulnerable people in manual jobs cannot protect themselves without losing money.
Industries such as retail, construction, hospitality and transport have tried to keep working throughout the year with staff often putting their own health at risk.
Mrs Khaled said: ‘I don’t think the Government is looking at low-skilled people. They say work from home. How can someone working in a supermarket work from home?
‘It’s elitism – they’ve never seen hardship, they’ve never had jobs in supermarkets or working in a restaurant. They don’t understand people who are not working in the city.’
Public Health England data published this week suggests that supermarkets are one of the most commonly visited places by people testing positive for coronavirus.
PHE used contact tracing data to establish where those infected with the virus had been in the week before they tested positive.
These figures are ‘primarily used to identify where someone may have caught their infection’, the officials say in the report.
Supermarkets were the most frequently occurring location of ‘common exposures’ between confirmed cases between November 16 and 22.
Some 19.3 per cent of people reported visiting a supermarket before testing positive.
Secondary schools had the second highest number of cases linked back to them – with 18.2 per cent – followed by primary schools at 12.7 per cent and hospitals with 5.6 per cent.
Although the data do not prove that people are spreading coronavirus in supermarkets, they suggest that a large proportion of people testing positive had visiting a supermarket shortly before.
‘Common exposure data does not prove where people are contracting Covid-19,’ PHE said.
‘It simply shows where people who have tested positive have been in the days leading up to their test and it is used to help identify possible outbreaks.’
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said last week: ‘Supermarkets are one of the very few places that people can visit during lockdown so it is unsurprising that they feature strongly when people are asked where they have visited.
‘Retailers continue to follow all safety guidance to make their premises Covid-secure.
‘They have spent hundreds of millions on safety measures including perspex screens, additional cleaning, and social distancing, to keep customers and colleagues safe.’
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