Pandemic rise in drink deaths
MORE people than ever before lost their lives to alcohol in the year of the pandemic. There were 8,974 deaths in Britain from alcohol-specific causes during 2020, figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal. That is an 18.6 per cent increase compared with 2019 and the highest year-on-year increase since records began. Nuno Albuquerque, addiction specialist, said: “More people lost their lives to alcohol even though they’d not long engaged with the NHS.”