London says the coronavirus is “out of control” of emergency

LONDON (Reuters) – London on Friday declared a major incident because its hospitals were at risk of being overwhelmed by a highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus that runs “out of control” across the UK.

Britain has the fifth worst official death toll in the world for COVID-19 at more than 78,000, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has shut down the economy and launched vaccines faster than its neighbors to try to stem the pandemic.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, of the opposition Labor Party, said hospital beds in the capital would be depleted in the coming weeks because the spread of the virus was “out of control”:

“We are declaring a major incident because the threat this virus poses to our city is at a time of crisis.”

London, which competes with Paris for the status of the richest city in Europe, has a population of over 9 million.

The designation “major incident” is usually reserved for serious attacks or accidents, in particular those that may involve “serious damage, injury, disruption or risk to the life or well-being of people, essential services, the environment or national security “.

London’s latest “major incident” was the Grenfell Tower fire on a high-rise residential block in 2017, when 72 people died.

FEARS FOR VACCINES

Khan said there were parts of London where 1 in 20 people had the virus. Pressure on the ambulance service, which now handled up to 9,000 emergency calls a day, caused firefighters to be recruited to drive vehicles and to be followed by police officers.

The Office for National Statistics estimated that 1.1 million people in England had the coronavirus between the week and January 2, the equivalent of one in 50 people.

Britain, the first country to approve vaccines made by Pfizer / BioNTech and AstraZeneca, approved the shot of Moderna on Friday, hoping to start administering it this spring. He also agreed to buy an additional 10 million doses.

However, Transport Minister Grant Shapps said he feared some vaccines would not work properly against a highly contagious variant of the coronavirus that has emerged in South Africa.

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

A laboratory study by the American drug manufacturer Pfizer, not yet reviewed by experts, indicated that the vaccine it is developing, developed by the German BioNTech, works against a key mutation in the new variants found in Britain and the South. africa.