Doctors take a patient from an ambulance to the Royal London hospital in London on January 19.
Photographer: Tolga Akmen / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Tolga Akmen / AFP / Getty Images
The UK suffered its worst pandemic day on Wednesday, with more than 1,800 deaths recorded in 24 hours, as Boris Johnson’s chief scientific adviser warned that some hospitals now look like “a war zone”.
The daily record number brings the total number of people who died in 28 days after a positive test in the UK to 93,290. Almost 40,000 patients are receiving treatment in hospitals in the UK.
England is in its third national blockade and similar measures are in place across the UK, but while restrictions have started to reduce infection rates, authorities say death rates and pressures on the The National Health Service will continue to grow.
“This is very, very bad at the moment, with enormous pressure,” Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, told Sky News when asked about the situation in hospitals. “In some cases, it looks like a war zone.”
Johnson reinforced the point. “It is true that it appears that infection rates in the country as a whole may be peaking or decreasing, but they are not decreasing very fast and of course we must control this,” the prime minister told reporters on Wednesday.
Ministers said earlier that the blockade could be eased gradually, as some 15 million people most vulnerable to the disease have received vaccines, which the government wants to be done by mid-February.
Vaccines
After three days in which the vaccination rate decreased, the number of people who received their first injections increased again, with 343,163 receiving injections on January 19. Over 4.6 million people in the UK received their first doses. The government has continued to expand sites offering vaccines, including a mosque in Birmingham and an Odeon cinema in Aylesbury, England.
Vallance also said that some restrictions may be necessary next winter – including wearing masks, especially indoors.
Any delay in lifting the blockade is likely to cause political problems for Johnson, who faces discontent among lawmakers in his Conservative Party over the damage the measures are doing to the economy. Steve Baker, a senior member of Parliament, warned last week that it would be a “disaster” if the pandemic restrictions lasted until spring.
‘Go hard early’
The most recent data from one of the largest virus studies in the country showed a worsening of the picture, mainly in London. One in 36 people in the capital was infected with Covid-19 between 6 and 15 January, more than double compared to the results of early December, according to the study by Imperial College London and Ipsos MORI.
Vallance suggested that the government should listen to the lessons of the pandemic. The evidence shows that “you have to go hard at first and more broadly if you want to get over it,” he said. “Waiting and watching doesn’t work.”
He also said that “stricter” quarantine measures for travelers in the past January and February may have helped prevent the disease from being imported, but in March “we had so many cases that I think it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.”
The government’s leading scientist has taken an optimistic tone about the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, although initial analyzes from Israel suggest that it is much less effective after the first dose than previously thought. If confirmed, this would raise questions about the UK’s strategy to postpone a second dose in order to reach more people for the first.
But Vallance pointed to test data showing that the vaccine can be 89% effective after a dose – starting 10 days after the injection. He said that while “it is probably not as high as in practice”, it will also not be as low as Israel’s analysis suggested. Scientists will study data from Israel and the United Kingdom in the coming weeks, he said.