UK not ‘plague island’ during the pandemic

WILL HAYWARD’S analysis of the Covid response (“When devolution met Covid – who fared better in the virus pandemic?” Western Mail, May 10) repeats one of the sweeping

generalisations I’ve grown tired of hearing from pundits these past two years, namely that the UK performed so much worse than other nations.

He says: “Compared to many other developed Western countries, the UK as a whole performed poorly... both England’s and Wales’ death rates are high when set alongside comparable nations.”

This is wrong. World Health Organization figures on excess deaths show that out of 191 countries the UK was in 102nd place, so roughly in the middle. Italy had 133 excess deaths per 100,000 people, Germany 116, Spain 111 and the UK 109. Interestingly, Sweden, which eschewed the harsh lockdowns seen elsewhere, had a figure of 56.

The excess deaths measure is crucial in these comparisons because each country used its own criteria for recording Covid death tolls; for example, Germany under-reported coronavirus deaths compared to the UK model.

The UK was by no means a world leader during the pandemic, but nor was it the “plague island” many commentators made it out to be. Peter Lewis

Swansea