UK lawmakers panic over coronavirus reaching parliament

British lawmakers have said that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s advice to citizens to wash their hands more often to prevent coronavirus attack is difficult for them to follow.
Several lawmakers expressed concern that the risks inside parliament were greater and that its aging facilities made following even this basic advice more difficult. Britain’s 19th-century parliamentary palace and its hundreds of grand offices and wood-panelled meeting rooms are ill-equipped to deal with the global outbreak of coronavirus, according to some worried lawmakers working inside the building.
The government is hoping to contain the spread of the virus, but expects the number of infections to rise from 85 currently. On Tuesday it published an action plan setting out how to cope if it becomes widespread in the country.
“Parliament seems hopelessly ill prepared,” lawmaker Chris Bryant told Reuters. “There are toilets where the towels ran out days ago, toilets with no soap or sanitiser, one men’s toilet where one of the two sinks has not worked for a decade.”
The grandeur of parliament’s ornate debating chamber, lined with lush green leather benches, masks a wider estate struggling to cope with the demands of the thousands of employees who work there every day from lawmakers and researchers to journalists, cooks and cleaners.

While the estate awaits a multi-billion pound renovation, toilets are frequently out of order, heating in offices can be temperamental and many doors in the oldest part of the building can only be opened by pressing a button or twisting a metal door knob.
Reuters saw a member of staff wearing rubber gloves cleaning door handles yesterday. Johnson, was asked by a lawmaker in parliament yesterday whether parliament was considering introducing conference calls and electronic voting if the situation worsened.
“We are still at the containment stage … when we come to the ‘delay’ phase she will be hearing a lot more detail about what we propose to do with large gatherings and places such as parliament,” he replied. A parliament spokeswoman said they would continue to follow guidance from Public Health England and were monitoring the situation closely.