Paramedics are working on 21 January 2021 in an ambulance parked outside the Royal London Hospital in East London.
DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – The UK’s official death toll from the coronavirus pandemic hit 100,000 on Tuesday, the worst milestone reached as a recent increase in infections continues to put pressure on hospitals and emergency services.
The latest government data showed that another 1,631 people died within 28 days after a positive test. To date, the UK has recorded more than 3.6 million infections.
Britain was particularly hard hit by the pandemic that erupted in the country almost a year ago. The first two reported Covid-19 cases were on 31 January 2020 in the tourist town of York in the north of England.
Now, a year later, the UK is in its third national exclusion and is struggling with a surge in infections and consequent hospitalizations and deaths, caused by a more transmissible variant of the virus. The mutation was first discovered in September 2020 in south-east England and spread to London and is now responsible for the majority of new infections in Britain. This led to a greater number of people being admitted to hospital, which put the health care system under extreme pressure.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, the United Kingdom has the fifth highest number of cases in the world, after the US, India, Brazil and Russia. France with about 3.1 million cases, followed by Italy and Spain, both with about 2.5 million cases, but the United Kingdom has a higher death toll than its European neighbors.
Experts put the British experience during the pandemic under a number of factors, including the subsequent first exclusion, which meant he struggled to gain control of the rapidly spreading virus and hesitation over the next two exclusions as affairs began to escalate again. has. periods of relaxation. A weak test and detection system was also a factor.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday that he accepted full responsibility for everything his government did.
“What I can tell you is that we really did everything we could, and still do everything in our power to reduce loss of life and suffering,” he told a daily news conference.
On a more positive note, the UK is one of the world leaders in the coronavirus vaccination campaign. It was the first country to approve and deploy the vaccine created by Pfizer and BioNTech, and the sample created by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
After launching its vaccination campaign in early December, a few weeks before the EU, it vaccinated a large number of its priority groups; elderly people and workers in the health care / care home, and now offers the vaccine to people over 70 and all those who are extremely vulnerable.
To date, it has vaccinated more than 6.8 million people with at least the first dose of a vaccine.