To be worried about coronavirus part 4

[idontusuallypanic]

I looked and couldn't see another 4th thread.

I'm personally worried this morning as I've heard that two students ds goes to school with have just returned from Milan where cases have just rocketed.

BREAKING: 11th death from #coronavirus has been reported in South korea - a 35-year-old Mongolian national. He is the first foreigner to die from the coronavirus in #SouthKorea

FloatingCloudz are they in a union or could they ring ACAS? I don't know if they have a legal leg to stand on so I'm clutching at straws. Surely if the advice is self isolate, they can't be sacked if they do just that? Maybe with a phone call to the GP to put it on record?

I'm the same @BentBastard

Just me and the kids. No one who could take them.

Guess we would just have to stay in together and hope for the best.

Can't believe our wonderful U.K. government have been so slow on the Italy thing! Bloody idiots.

No they’re not in a union. This is exactly my point - what can you do if your employer refuses to let you self isolate and tells you to get your butt to work?

I’m the same, no one to send the children away to. I think my husband would be fine in some kind of serviced apartment I suppose and could have food delivered but the cost for two weeks - yikes.

I’d be tempted to take the risk as we are all healthy and the kids are super young, but equally would feel pretty bad if they spread it around school.

FloatingCloudz that’s gong to be the situation for so many. I imagine it only working if people are medicaly told to stay at home because they are being tested or we reach the point of lockdown so the whole business has to close.

FloatingCloudz there needs to be government advice on this doesn't there. Employers can't be allowed to do that. It's looking like they can at the moment though. What a nightmare.

Kids aren’t super young .

Thanks for that info on self isolation. Hopefully it won’t come to that but it’s good to be prepared.

Our kids school also had a Northern Italy ski trip over half term (there must have been loads of ski trips in NI over half term!).

I wonder if they will let us know if someone self isolates? I'm generally quite pragmatic but as my son is asthmatic I'm a little more concerned as it's a virus that particular hits the respiratory system.

URGENT: Iranian Ministry of Health calls on citizens to stay in their homes as much as possible and not to travel to other cities. #iran #coronavirus

Ring them BentBastard if they visited certain areas then they HAVE to isolate, symptoms or not.

My DCs school has had two ski trips to northern Italy over half term. They've sent around an email confirming the government advice. There's no way that every child who went on that trip is currently cough free. Half of them were coughing and spluttering before they even went. School was full of germs when they broke up for the holidays.

wrt to employment, can you give 'you and yours' radio programme a call? they are very informative and give good advice.

or can you call the employer's oh provider?

If you have nobody to send your kids to for self isolation then the only choice is to isolate together. Please don't send them to school. They may not suffer badly with viruses, but children like mine could possibly die.

@FloatingCloudz

That's disgraceful. I think what's needed is for it to be enforced by law so that any employer not complying will face a fine. That's the advantage that China has as a totalitarian state, they are able to enforce quarantine with threat of sanction.

I think also that it would be a good idea to get legal advice. A solicitor's letter pointing out that an employee who is sacked for self isolating in these circumstances would have a strong case to claim unfair dismissal might do the trick. If the business owner only cares about profit, they won't want to have to fork out on legal fees and then compensation.

Iranian Ministry of Health calls on citizens to stay in their homes as much as possible and not to travel to other cities.

Seems like things are pretty serious there, despite what some officials would have believe.

Ofwarren I don't believe they went to a lockdown town so they will be relying on isolating based on symptoms I believe. The headlines aren't very helpful and they don't actually list the lockdown towns in most articles so information isn't great IMO.

I'm an employment solicitor. You only have unfair dismissal rights after two complete years' service.

@hasa but what if the government stipulates to self isolate?
what can the employer and employee expect?

I think I’d probably just have to get DH to isolate - there’s no way we could feasibly all isolate for two weeks, so easier if it’s just one of us.

Makes no difference to the ability to claim unfair dismissal. You can sack someone because you don't like the colour of their shoes before they have two years' service.

There are some limited exceptions but they wouldn't apply here without really stretching the legal argument.

We have one bathroom, so self isolation would be very difficult . Surely the person cleaning the bathroom would be at risk ? I also don’t have family nearby who could take my dc, and anyway, surely dc could be incubators?
I am worrying about all of this, plus ddog. What happens to pets ? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to look after our dog if we ended up in hospital, as they would worry about catching it from her having been in a house with an infected person.

I think what's needed is for it to be enforced by law so that any employer not complying will face a fine
Yes. And people need to be paid full salary otherwise they’ll conceal symptoms and not disclose if they’ve been to a high risk area. I can imagine people on zero hour contracts returning from a holiday and not mentioning that they feel unwell because they can’t afford to not get paid.

If you're self isolating I'm sure you would be able to get signed off as sick and so would at least be entitled to SSP (subject to qualifying)

That PHE page says “talk to your employer about the importance of self-isolation...If you are well, you can work at home.” Employer refusal isn’t dealt with and it seems to me that emergency legislation would be needed to change employment law re this type of absence. Perhaps that will happen if matters develop in the UK to the point where it becomes a big problem.