Medics bring 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 the worst day of the pandemic on Wednesday, with more than 1,800 dead in 24 hours, as Boris Johnson’s chief scientific advisor warned that some hospitals now look “like a war zone.”
The daily record toll brings the total number of people who died within 28 days of a positive test in the UK to 93,290. Nearly 40,000 patients are now being treated in UK hospitals.
England is in its third national lockdown and similar measures are in place in the UK, but as restrictions begin to lower infection rates, officials say the death rates and pressure on the National Health Service will continue to grow.
“This is very bad at the moment, with tremendous 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 contagion rates in the country in general seem to be peaking or flattening now, but they are not flattening out very quickly and it is clear that we need to keep a grip on this,” the prime minister told reporters on Wednesday.
Ministers have previously said that the lockdown could be gradually eased once around 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 of slowing vaccination coverage, the number of people receiving their first injections increased again by 343,163 injections on January 19. More than 4.6 million people in the UK have had their first doses. The government continued to expand vaccination sites, including at a mosque in Birmingham and an Odeon cinema in Aylesbury, England.
Vallance also said some restrictions may be needed next winter, including wearing masks, especially indoors.
Any delay in lifting the lockdown is likely to cause political trouble for Johnson, who is unhappy among lawmakers in his Conservative party about 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 last until spring.
‘Go hard early’
The latest data from one of the country’s largest virus studies showed a deteriorated picture, especially in London. One in 36 people in the capital became infected with Covid-19 between January 6 and January 15, more than double the results from early December, according to the study by Imperial College London and Ipsos MORI.
Vallance suggested that the government heed the lessons of the pandemic. The evidence shows that “you have to go hard and wider early if you want to get on top of this,” he said. “Waiting and watching doesn’t work.”
He also said that “tougher” quarantine measures for travelers last January and February could have helped prevent the entry of the disease, but in March “we had so many cases that I don’t think it would have made much of a difference”.
The top government scientist struck a positive note on the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, despite early analysis from Israel suggesting that it has much lower efficacy after the first dose than previously thought. If confirmed, it will raise questions about the UK’s strategy of delaying a second dose in order to reach more people for their first.
But Vallance pointed to research data showing that the vaccine can be 89% effective after a single dose – starting 10 days after the injection. He said that while it “probably won’t be as high in practice,” it won’t be as low as the Israel analysis suggested. Scientists will be studying data from Israel and the UK in the coming weeks, he said.