UK sees daily record of COVID deaths, London hospitals are on the verge

LONDON (Reuters) – The UK recorded its highest daily death toll since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic on Friday as London declared a major incident and warned its hospitals were in danger of being overwhelmed.

With a highly contagious new variant of the virus rising across Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has shut down the economy and is vaccinating faster than European neighbors in the country in an effort to stem the pandemic.

Britain has the world’s fifth highest official death toll from COVID-19 at nearly 80,000, and the 1,325 deaths reported within 28 days of a positive test on Friday surpassed the previous daily record of last April.

“Among other things, our hospitals are under pressure like never before since the onset of the pandemic, and infection rates across the country are still rising at an alarming rate,” Johnson said in a statement.

“The NHS (National Health Service) is under serious strain and we must act to protect it, both so that our doctors and nurses can continue to save lives and to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible.”

A further 68,053 COVID-19 cases have been reported – also a new daily high – meaning nearly three million people have now been tested positive for the disease in the UK, with a total population of around 67 million.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, of the Labor opposition party, said hospital beds in the capital would run out within the next few weeks because the spread of the virus was ‘out of control’.

“We declare a major incident because the threat this virus poses to our city is a crisis point,” Khan said.

The term ‘major incident’ is usually reserved for attacks or serious accidents, especially those that are likely to ’cause serious harm, damage, disruption or danger to human life or welfare, essential services, the environment or national security’.

The last “major incident” in London was the fire in Grenfell Tower in a high-rise apartment block in 2017, when 72 people were killed.

RELATIONSHIP TO VACCINE

According to Khan, there are parts of London where 1 in 20 people had the virus. The pressure on the ambulance service, which now handles up to 9,000 emergency calls a day, resulted in firefighters being called to drive vehicles, and police officers would follow.

London, which competes with Paris for the status of the richest city in Europe, has a population of more than nine million.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that 1.1 million people in England had the coronavirus in the week to January 2, which is equivalent to one in 50.

Britain, the first country to approve vaccines by Pfizer / BioNTech and AstraZeneca, approved Moderna’s shot on Friday, which it hopes to begin administering this spring. It has also been agreed to purchase another 10 million doses of Moderna.

However, Transport Minister Grant Shapps said there were fears that some vaccines might not work properly against a highly contagious variant of the coronavirus that originated in South Africa.

“This is a very big concern for the scientists,” he told LBC radio.

A laboratory study by US drugmaker Pfizer, which has not yet been evaluated by a peer, has shown that the vaccine it produces, developed by German BioNTech, works against one major mutation in the new variant developed in Britain and South Africa occurs.