UK death toll soars past 50,000
Third wave washes over US
LONDON: The United Kingdom reached a bleak milestone in its battle with coronavirus yesterday as the official death toll passed 50,000, casting a shadow on the positive news about the effectiveness of a potential vaccine.
The death toll is higher than the other worstaffected countries in Europe and the number of people killed by coronavirus is only higher in the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico.
Asked about the latest mile stone, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Britain was ``not out of the woods yet'', despite Pfizer this week announcing that early data showed its experimental Covid19 vaccine was more than 90% effective.
``Every death is a tragedy and we mourn everybody who's gone,’’ Johnson said.
He has ordered England back into a monthlong national lockdown amid concerns that a second wave of infections could overwhelm the health service.
But Johnson has been criticised by political opponents for moving too slowly into both national lockdowns, for a shortage of personal protective equipment and for failing to protect the elderly in care homes.
Early in the pandemic, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, had said that keeping the death toll below 20,000 would be ``a good outcome''.
A further 22,950 people tested positive for Covid19 yesterday, up from 20,412 a day earlier.
Sweden's Government said yesterday it planned to ban the sale of alcohol in bars, restaurants and nightclubs after 10pm as it fights to contain a surge in Covid19 infections.
The country has seen record numbers of new infections in recent weeks, straining the health system. One in four intensive care beds was now taken by a patient with Covid19, the Government said.
Since the start of the epidemic Sweden has had confirmed 166,707 cases of Covid19 and 6082 people have died there.
Covid19 cases are still surging in the Americas, averaging 150,000 a day in the past week, the World Health Organisation's regional office says.
The United States continued to report recordbreaking numbers, while parts of Canada and some states in Mexico, including the capital, were experiencing spikes, the PanAmerican Health Organisation (PAHO) said.
The US became the first country to pass 10 million Covid19 infections, a Reuters tally indicated, as the third wave of the virus surges across the nation.
Other countries in the Americas are doing better.
Argentina, Costa Rica and Jamaica had curbed the outbreak with effective contact tracing and most Caribbean nations had avoided spikes by acting fast, PAHO assistant director Jarbas Barbosa said.
Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay had flattened their curves, he said. — Reuters