LONDON - UK health workers (NHS) who put their life on the line during the coronavirus pandemic have demanded Boris Johnson ‘stop clapping and start paying’ as they marched in the streets calling for better pay.

Hundreds marched down Oxford Street, central London, Manchester, Brighton and Bristol as they highlighted the coronavirus death toll among NHS staff. They donned scrubs stained with fake blood and chanted ‘640 healthcare workers dead, blood on their hands’ along side images of the prime minister.

The march followed two minutes of silence for fallen NHS workers. The protest comes after nurses were excluded from a public sector pay rise in July. Nurses slammed the decision as a ‘slap in the face’ while they were dealing with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Alia Butt, 33, a psychotherapist from Essex, reminded Mr Johnson that nurses saved his life after he became infected with coronavirus and yet they still had to fight for a pay rise. She said: ‘We have simply had enough. The money is there.'(FA)