LIKE many others, over the last few weeks I have watched the growth of the coronavirus, which is now a global pandemic. 

I looked on while China, Italy and Spain announced more and more cases and saw the death toll rising, hoping that once it hit Britain we would be ready to gain some sort of control over it. 

This period of hope has now passed — we are in the midst of a global pandemic.

Watching and reading about the unfolding events, one thing really does instil me with fear — and that is not if I catch the disease. 

I have already drawn that conclusion that it probably will happen and, unlike many others who are more vulnerable, I will probably be OK. 

What terrifies me is the hundreds and thousands who will be affected financially, and how little help there is available to the poorest in society. 

I know that claims can be made for employment-support allowance (ESA), statutory sick pay (SSP) — in some cases — and universal credit (UC), but this is in fact the problem for many. 

My situation is different, but in no way unique. I am a full-time student and my husband is a freelance/self-employed music teacher. 

He is majority self-employed, delivering music and instrumental tuition in schools, mainly paid for by the parents. 

However, he is also “employed” one day a week to deliver music lessons in a primary school. 

Currently, as I write, schools remain open but they are already starting to cancel non-essential teaching, meaning that self-employed work is already drying up. 

If and when schools close, we will be relying on one day a week teaching pay, my final student loan (which has to be paid back with interest) and (old-style) tax credits. 

Because we will get “sick pay” from one school for one day we won’t qualify for ESA or SSP, but we may get housing and council-tax support, which would just about keep our heads above water. 

This is where it gets tricky. If we want to claim temporary support in the midst of this, we will need to put in a new claim for UC — and once we have done this there is no going back, I will transition from the old to the new system.  

This means that my student loan will be now be considered “unearned income” which is deducted from any UC award pound for pound, unlike the previous system that only considers a proportion of your student loan as income. 

So, when taking into account my student loan and grant from the university, it is very unlikely that I will be entitled to any support at all, which will leave me unable to pay my rent in the coming months. 

I’m far from the only one facing problems. Many people are still on the old system and will find themselves in the same situation if they are forced to transition to UC, leaving many in very difficult situations in the aftermath and many who are unable to continue their studies forced back into the low-pay, no-pay cycle. 

This will also affect people in precarious work and self-employment, due to the minimum-income floor. Although it is suspended for now it will be reinstated.

We already know that the UC system over the past few years has caused mass evictions, debt and even death.

So in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, when people are losing their jobs in the hundreds, while they bail out airlines and provide mortgage holidays for homeowners, why should those already worst off endure any other forms of financial hardship? 

We cannot allow this to happen unchallenged. 

The government should have had the decency to act on the warning signs long ago, but it is now more than ever that we need to be saying that UC is not fit for purpose and needs to be scrapped once and for all. 

If the government wants to ensure that people are able to comply with social distancing and self-isolation measures then it must provide the protections to enable them to do that. 

We have been saying for years that people have been making life-and-death decisions every day while on UC — and that situation will worsen during this pandemic unless they are certain that the support networks are in place and their loved ones won’t go without. 

The government needs to do the right thing now — scrap UC and announce rent holidays and emergency payments for everyone affected by the coronavirus pandemic, including those who are already suffering under an unfair and dangerous benefits system.