National Post (National Edition)
U.K. first in Europe to surpass 100K deaths
Johnson panned for slow move on lockdowns
More than 100,000 people have died from coronavirus in the U.K., the first country in Europe to surpass the threshold.
“It's hard to compute the sorrow contained in that grim statistic,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a televised press conference on Tuesday. “I am deeply sorry for every life lost.”
The scale of the pandemic has exceeded some of the worst predictions made a year ago. Patrick Vallance, the U.K. government's chief scientific adviser, said in March that fewer than 20,000 deaths would be a “good outcome” for Britain.
The number of dead has doubled since Nov. 7, when the toll reached 50,000. Johnson eased restrictions to allow non-essential shops to reopen in the run-up to Christmas but families had to rein in their plans to meet over the festive season as cases of the virus soared.
The prime minister brought in a new lockdown on Jan. 5 to try to prevent the spread of the new variant, which scientists said was more contagious than the original virus. That's helped reduce the average number of new cases in the past week to almost half that of the peak in early January, easing the pressure on hospitals, which have been struggling to cope with the resurgence.
The government has faced criticism for its management of the pandemic, including that it waited too long to impose lockdowns and that it failed to get sufficient stocks of protective equipment for health workers.
“Mistakes have been made,” said Richard Murray, chief executive at The King's Fund, a think tank focused on health and social care. “Decisions to enter lockdown have consistently come late, with the government failing to learn from past mistakes or the experiences of other countries.”
Johnson, who has come under repeated pressure from members of parliament from his Conservative Party to ease restrictions, defended his government's response and said everything had been done to stem the number of deaths.
“We did everything that we could to minimize suffering and minimize the loss of life,” he said. “We will make sure we learn the lessons and reflect and prepare.”
The prime minister promised a plan for lifting curbs on businesses and people's social lives “over the course of the next few days and weeks.”
But standing alongside him, England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty urged caution.
“It looks like it's coming down slightly in some areas, but in others it's not convincing,” Whitty said.
People should be “realistic” that deaths will come down “relatively slowly over the next two weeks,” said Whitty, who is Johnson's senior health adviser.