Paramedics are working in an ambulance parked in front of Royal London Hospital in East London on 21 January 2021.
DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – The official UK death toll from the coronavirus pandemic reached 100,000 on Tuesday, a serious milestone reached as a recent rise in infections continues to put pressure on hospitals and emergency services.
The latest government data showed that 1,631 people had died during the 28 days following the positive test. To date, the UK has reported more than 3.6 million infections.
Britain has been particularly affected by the pandemic that erupted in the country almost a year ago. The first two reported cases of Covid-19 occurred in the tourist city of York, in the north of England, on 31 January 2020.
Now, a year later, the UK is in its third national closure and is battling an increase in infections and subsequent hospitalizations and deaths, caused by a more transmissible variant of the virus. First discovered in the south-east of England in September 2020, the mutation spread to London and is now responsible for most new infections in Britain. This has caused more people to be admitted to hospital, putting extreme pressure on the healthcare system.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the United Kingdom is the fifth largest number of cases in the world, after the United States, India, Brazil and Russia. They are followed by France with around 3.1 million cases, followed by Italy and Spain, both with around 2.5 million cases each, but the UK has a higher death toll than its European neighbors.
Experts have reduced the UK’s harsh experience during the pandemic to several factors, including its first subsequent blockade, which meant it struggled to control the rapidly spreading virus and faltered the next two blockades when cases already they had begun to increase periods of relaxation. A poor testing and tracking system has also been an important factor.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday that he took full responsibility for everything his government had done.
“What I can tell you is that we have really done everything we can and continue to do everything we can, to minimize the loss of lives and minimize suffering,” he said at a daily news conference.
On a more positive note, the UK is among the world leaders when it comes to its coronavirus vaccination campaign. It was the first country to authorize and deploy the vaccine created by Pfizer and BioNTech, and the jab created by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
Having launched its vaccination campaign in early December, weeks before the EU, it has vaccinated much of its priority groups; to the elderly and health care workers, and now offers the vaccine to people over the age of 70 and to anyone extremely vulnerable.
To date, it has vaccinated more than 6.8 million people with at least the first dose of vaccine.