UK criticized for slow testing

Brits should get used to social distancing

LONDON, April 23, (Agencies): The British government has come under sustained criticism for responding slowly to the coronavirus pandemic as its chief medical adviser warned that social distancing measures may have to stay in place for the rest of this year and beyond.

The government reported that 759 more hospital patients with the virus had died since the last update a day earlier, taking the country’s total to 18,100. In Europe, the U.K. is behind only Italy, Spain and France in virusrelated deaths. The actual death toll is potentially thousands more since the British government does not include in its daily updates the people who died in care homes or other settings outside hospitals.

Daily figures for reported deaths suggest the U.K. is going through the peak of its virus outbreak, a view that Health Secretary Matt Hancock supported. The nation hit its highest reported daily death toll in hospitals of 980 on April 10.

Professor Chris Whitty, the chief medical adviser, said the experience of countries where infections surged earlier suggests there will not be a sudden fall in the number of daily deaths.

Whitty also warned that social distancing measures may have to stay in place for at least the rest of 2020 as it’s unlikely a vaccine or anti-viral drug treatment for the new virus will be discovered any time soon. He said the probability of either being available “in the next calendar year is incredibly small.” It will be up to ministers, he said, to decide upon the mix of measures when the lockdown restrictions are eased.

“I think we should be realistic about that,” he said. “We’re going to have to rely on other social measures, which, of course, are very socially disruptive as everyone is finding at the moment.”

Lukashenko

Opposition

Earlier, Keir Starmer, the new leader of the main opposition Labour Party, told lawmakers that a “pattern is emerging” in which the Conservative government has been too slow in putting the country into a virus lockdown, in testing people for the virus and in getting critical protective gear for medical workers.

He spoke in the first partially-online Prime Minister’s Questions session in the House of Commons as lawmakers sought to strike a balance between scrutinizing the government and abiding by social distancing guidelines.

Labour lawmaker Barry Sheerman went further, slamming the government’s handling of the pandemic as “shambolic” – a sign that the multiparty political consensus that formed over the pandemic is fraying.

The questions are coming as Prime Minister Boris Johnson convalesces at

not yet been implemented,” he said. (AP)

2 migrants hurt as shots fired:

Two asylum-seekers have been hospitalized with light injuries after gunshots were fired into Greece’s largest migrant camp on the eastern Aegean Sea island of Lesbos, police said Wednesday.

The unknown assailant or assailants evaded arrest, while the two injured migrants were taken to the island’s hospital as

Maas

his country retreat following his weeklong stay in a hospital receiving treatment for COVID-19. Johnson, who has been away from the front line of the crisis for nearly four weeks after he first tested positive for the virus, is due to hold an audience with Queen Elizabeth II by phone later Wednesday.

“You can’t have a void of decisionmaking,” former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair told ITV television.

While sympathizing with Johnson’s plight, Blair said hugely important decisions have to be “taken now,’’ including ramping up testing so Britain can safely exit its coronavirus lockdown, which is scheduled to run until May 7 at least.

Sitting

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who has been sitting in for Johnson, said the government still aims to conduct 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of this month - even though it is only delivering around 20,000 tests now.

“With a project like this, it does require an exponential increase in the final days and the final week,” Raab told the slimmed-down chamber, where only 50 of the House’s 650 lawmakers were able to attend and up to 120 could participate via video.

The government has also faced acute criticism over the lack of protective gear f or front-line workers, a topic highlighted by the days-long confusion surrounding a Royal Air Force flight picking up protective gear from Istanbul, Turkey. Though it finally arrived in the early hours of Wednesday at Brize Norton, central England, it remains unclear how much protective gear was on the plane.

Raab told lawmakers that 69 workers in the National Health Service have died after testing positive for the virus. Health Secretary Hancock later said 15 social care workers have also died.

Hancock said testing will be broadened over the coming days with drivethru and new mobile units.

“This is one area we’ve had our foot on the gas,” Hancock said.

It is unreasonable to expect life to be back to normal in near future, Whitty said in a statement to the press, and added the long-term solution was a vaccine or a treatment for the virus.

He ruled out discovery of a vaccine in the next 12 months despite the government’s announcement that clinical tests would begin on Thursday based on a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford.

“The virus will not disappear nor eliminated, and we have to understand it will remain with us ... in the near future,” he said.

British health department announced earlier 759 people died of the virus to increase fatalities to 18,100, while infections reach 133,495.

a precaution, police said. No further detail was provided.

The incident occurred late Wednesday at the notoriously overcrowded Moria camp, which was designed to accommodate under 3,000 people and now contains more than 18,000. Lesbos is a major arrival point for thousands of migrants and refugees seeking a better life in Europe. (AP)

Victims’ groups join WWII camp:

Jews, Serbs, Roma and anti-fascists joined top Croatian officials for the first time in years Wednesday in commemorating the victims of a notorious World War II concentration camp, but the community representatives warned that more needs to be done to curb right-wing sentiments in the European Union country.

The delegations laid wreaths and flowers at the memorial site for the Jasenovac camp complex, where tens of thousands of people were brutally executed by the pro-Nazi regime that ruled Croatia during the war. (AP)