‘The most dangerous time’: UK’s toughest virus threat
Hospitals swamped as Britain races to vaccinate 15 million
The UK opened seven mass vaccination centres yesterday as it moved into the most perilous moment of the Covid-19 pandemic, with exhausted medical staff reeling under the pressure of packed hospitals and increasing admissions.
England’s chief medical officer, Dr Chris Whitty, warned people to strictly follow measures to prevent the spread of the virus while they wait their turn for vaccination. The government is trying to vaccinate some 15 million people by February 15 but Britain’s National Health Service is struggling to treat those who are ill now.
“I think everybody accepts that this is the most dangerous time we’ve really had in terms of numbers into the NHS,” Whitty told the BBC.
People in the UK already face severe coronavirus restrictions but political leaders are considering tightening the rules further as a new, more transmissible variant of Covid-19 aggravates the healthcare crisis. Leaders want to vaccinate the country out of the crisis but, with hospitals under siege, they must persuade the public to take prevention methods more seriously.
“We don’t rule out taking further action if it’s needed, but it’s your actions now that can make a difference: Stay at home!” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said during a press conference yesterday.
Britain, with more than 81,000 dead, has the deadliest virus toll in Europe and the number of hospital beds filled by Covid-19 patients has risen steadily for more than a month. English hospitals are now treating 55 per cent more Covid-19 cases than during the first peak of the pandemic in April.
England last week entered a third national lockdown that closed all nonessential shops, schools, colleges and universities for at least six weeks. The lockdown is slightly looser than the one in the spring with many more workplaces and businesses open, but police across the country have issued fines for breaking rules that require people to stay home except for essential reasons such as exercise or grocery shopping.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government hopes the restrictions will reduce the strain on the NHS while it ramps up a nationwide mass vaccination programme
using vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca. A third vaccine that has been approved for use, by Moderna, won’t arrive until March.
Seven large-scale vaccination centres are opening, joining around 1000 other sites across the country, including ones at hospitals, general practitioners’ clinics and pharmacies.
Nearly 2.3 million people in the UK
have received a Covid-19 vaccine so far. The government’s goal is to vaccinate the most vulnerable by midFebruary, targeting people over 70, front-line healthcare workers, nursing home residents and staff and others who are especially vulnerable. That will protect the people who account for almost 90 per cent of coronavirus-related deaths and may
allow restrictions to be eased, the government says.
“[But] we cannot be complacent,” Johnson said during a visit to a vaccination centre in Bristol. “The worst thing now would be for us to allow the success in rolling out a vaccine programme to breed any kind of complacency about the state of the pandemic.”