‘War zone’ in hospitals as daily deaths hit new high

AN EARLY end to lockdown would be ‘insanity’, Britain’s chief scientist warned as a record 1,820 Covid deaths were reported yesterday.

People may not realise the scale of the crisis facing the NHS, Sir Patrick Vallance said as he admitted a simpler public health message might have allowed more lives to be saved.

‘You go for a walk in the park or something, life looks normal,’ he told Sky News. ‘You go to a hospital... some look like a war zone at the moment. This is a very, very bad moment.’

Sir Patrick added: ‘There are perpetually people who want to release things sooner, perpetually don’t want to go into lockdown. This causes a lot of confusion. The lesson is you’ve got to go hard, early and broader if you want to get on top of this; waiting and watching simply doesn’t work.’

Boris Johnson said the rise in the death toll to 93,290 was ‘appalling’. And he warned: ‘There will be more deaths to come, because what we’re seeing is the result of the wave of the new variant we saw just before Christmas.

‘It’s spread very quickly, in all parts of the country.’ Sir Patrick defended Britain’s strategy of delaying second vaccine doses so that more people could have their first one. Health chiefs in Israel – which has immunised more people per capita than any other country – have reported that one dose of the Pfizer jab is just 33 per cent effective.

Sir Patrick (pictured) said it had to be borne in mind that the vaccine did not protect at all for the first ten days, so a higher percentage would result if people infected soon after having their jab were discounted.

But he vowed to ‘ look very carefully’ at the data. Vaccines were not yet doing enough ‘ heavy lifting’ to see off the virus quickly, he said. A record 343,163 people were given a first dose in the UK yesterday, while 3,759 received a second dose.