By Ghaith Aljayyoussi, The Lancet, June 26, 2020
The lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) among health-care workers in the UK has been an integral part of the debate on the UK Government's failure in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar to the close contact that is expected between patients and health-care staff, which could put both at risk of transmissible disease in the absence of appropriate measures, members of the public can also come in close contact with police staff during the process of frisking. The chances of being stopped and frisked by the police are dramatically (up to 10 fold) increased for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) individuals in the UK who are also disproportionately affected by the risks of COVID-19.
On the afternoon of June 11, 2020, I was stopped by two officers from the Merseyside Police Force in Liverpool, UK. The officers were wearing civilian clothing and claimed that I had been walking at an unusually slow pace, which had seemingly raised their suspicion. The officers kept very close to me as I was being questioned, despite my pleas to keep a 2 m distance. They then attempted to do a full body search. I was surprised that they were going to search me without using PPE, so I demanded that they at least wear gloves if they were to search me. Because the officers had no gloves at the time, I was walked to a police van about 200 m away where PPE was available. I was forced to enter the police van, which had other personnel inside it who also were not wearing PPE. One of the officers picked a pair of gloves with their bare hands and handed them to another officer who wore them and immediately started frisking me without disinfecting them.
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