Medici takes a patient from an ambulance to the Royal London Hospital in London on 19 January.
Photographer: Tolga Akmen / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Tolga Akmen / AFP / Getty Images
The UK suffered its worst day in the pandemic on Wednesday, with more than 1,800 deaths recorded within 24 hours. Boris Johnson’s chief scientific adviser has warned that some hospitals now look ‘like a war zone’.
The record period brings the total number of people who died within 28 days after a positive test in the UK to 93,290. Nearly 40,000 patients are now receiving treatment in UK hospitals.
England is in its third national exclusion and similar measures apply in the UK, but although the restrictions have begun to reduce infection rates, officials say the death toll and pressure on the The national health service will continue to grow.
“It’s very, very bad right now, with enormous pressure,” Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientist, told Sky News when asked about the situation in hospitals. “In some cases, it looks like a war zone.”
Johnson strengthened the point. “It is true that it looks as if the infection rates in the country may already be peaking or flat, but that they are not flattening very quickly, and it is clear that we need to seize this,” the prime minister told reporters on Wednesday said.
Ministers said earlier that the closure could be facilitated gradually once about 15 million people most vulnerable to the disease received vaccinations, which the government wants to do by mid-February.
Vaccines
After three days in which the vaccination rate decreased, the number of people receiving their first shots picked up again, with 343,163 injections. On January 19, more than 4.6 million people in the UK had their first doses. The government has continued to expand the sites offering vaccines, including a mosque in Birmingham and an Odeon cinema in Aylesbury, England.
Vallance also said that next winter some restrictions may be needed – including wearing masks, especially indoors.
Any delay in lifting the closure is likely to cause political problems for Johnson, who is experiencing dissatisfaction 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 pandemic restrictions lasted until spring.
‘Go early early’
The latest data from one of the largest virus studies in the country showed a worse picture, especially in London. One in 36 people in the capital was infected with Covid-19 between January 6 and January 15, more than double the results of early December, according to a study by Imperial College London and Ipsos MORI.
Vallance suggested that the government should heed the lessons of the pandemic. The evidence shows that you have to go early and wider if you want to work on this, he said. “Wait and watch not work.”
He also said that ‘stricter’ quarantine measures for travelers last January and February could possibly help prevent the introduction of the disease, but by March ‘we had so many cases, I think, it would not have made much difference.’
The government’s top scientist has an upbeat tone regarding the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, despite early analysis by Israel, suggesting that it has a much lower efficacy after the first dose than previously thought. If confirmed, it would raise questions about the UK’s strategy of postponing a second dose to reach more people for their first.
But Vallance pointed out that the trial data show that the vaccine can be 89% effective after one dose – from 10 days after the injection. He said that although it “probably will not be as high as in practice”, it will also not be as low as the Israeli analysis suggested. Scientists will study data from Israel and the United Kingdom in the coming weeks, he said.