London, UK
Reuters
The United Kingdom has overtaken Italy to report the highest official death toll from the new coronavirus in Europe, figures released on Tuesday showed, increasing pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson over his response to the crisis.
Weekly figures from Britain’s Office for National Statistics added more than 7,000 deaths in England and Wales in the week to 24th April, raising the total for the United Kingdom to 32,313.
Only the United States, with a population nearly five times greater, has suffered more confirmed fatalities from the virus than Britain, according to the data so far.
A woman walks on an almost empty London Bridge at the height of the traditional morning rush hour, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, London, Britain, on 5th May. PICTURE: Reuters/Toby Melville
Tuesday’s figures are based on death certificate mentions of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, including suspected cases.
While different ways of counting make comparisons with other countries difficult, the figure confirmed Britain was among those hit worst by a pandemic that has killed more than 250,000 worldwide.
ISLE OF WIGHT BECOMES UK’S VIRUS APP TEST BED
The coronavirus outbreak put paid to May Day festivities on the Isle of Wight this week and brought the spotlight to the island for a very different reason: it has been designated a testing ground for a tracing app aimed at stemming the virus’s spread.
Walking down the unusually quiet High Street in Cowes, where visitors usually step off the ferry from the south coast of England, local councillor and health service employee Anni Adams said her home town would have been preparing street parties.
“It would have been all down here, with bunting. It seems like yesterday we were meeting, umming and ahhing over whether to go ahead.”
Instead, Adams is one of the health service workers and council staff who on Tuesday became the first cohort to start downloading to their smart phones an app the British government hopes can help limit transmission of the virus, which has now infected more than 3.5 million people worldwide.
It is Britain’s answer to the kind of software which, along with wider testing and tracking, is seen as key to easing restrictions on movement that have paralysed economies.
Using it will be voluntary, giving the option to anyone who has symptoms of COVID-19 or a positive test, to enter their details to start the tracing process.
Unlike similar projects in other European countries, Britain has chosen to process data centrally rather than on the devices themselves, where a higher level of privacy can be guaranteed.
Adams says she thinks she is one of many people to have had concerns about privacy, but Britain’s National Health Service – a unit of which developed the app – has experience of handling data, and anyway “it’s about a bigger picture at the moment.”
“If we can help get out of lockdown on the island and help save lives that’s more important to me than whether a person on the end of a phone knows I went to Waitrose yesterday,” she said, referring to a British supermarket.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday that data privacy and security were paramount in the app’s development.
The island was chosen for the project partly as national health services for all its 140,000-strong population are run by one single entity.
Ideally, more than half the population will download the app, its developer said on Monday, but takeup by 20 per cent or more would give important insights into how the virus was spreading.
The rest of the island’s citizens will be invited to download the app from Thursday.
– ISLA BINNIE, Reuters
“I don’t think we’ll get a real verdict on how countries have done until the pandemic is over, and particularly until we’ve got international comprehensive data on all-cause mortality,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told reporters.
Opposition politicians said the figures proved the government had been too slow to provide enough protective equipment to hospitals and introduce mass testing.
“I’d be amazed if, when we look back, we don’t think: yep we could have done something differently there,” the government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, said in response to lawmakers’ questions on testing.
Responding to the ONS figures, a Downing Street spokesman pointed to Johnson’s recent comments that Britain had passed the peak of the disease but remained in a “dangerous phase”.
He also cited the advice of England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty: “Different countries are recording different things in relation to deaths.”
Italy and Spain, the next worst-hit European countries, have smaller populations than Britain, further complicating comparisons.
“Putting a graph out with the United States at the top and UK second is not helpful, but once you start to break it down by looking at the population we should be seriously asking questions about what’s different,” said Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University.
“Why are six countries disproportionately affected?” Heneghan added, referring to a list dominated by Europe.
The daily cumulative death toll published by Britain’s government, which records deaths only for confirmed coronavirus cases, rose on Tuesday to 29,427 – exceeding Italy’s own daily toll for the first time.
Ministers dislike comparisons of the headline death toll, saying that excess mortality – the number of deaths from all causes that exceed the average for the time of year – is more meaningful because it is internationally comparable.
Excess death
But early evidence for excess mortality suggests Britain will be one of the hardest-hit on this measure, too.
ONS statistician Nick Stripe said excess deaths for the United Kingdom were running about 42,000 higher than average at this point in the year.
However, only about 80 per cent of these excess deaths have been linked specifically with COVID-19.
The weekly ONS data also showed the peak in COVID-19 deaths has likely passed, although the week to 24th April was still the second-deadliest since comparable records began being kept in 1993.
The overall decline also masked a worsening picture in care homes.
The ONS said 7,911 deaths from all causes were registered in care homes in the week ending 24th April, three times higher than a month previously.
“These figures show that talk of being ‘past the peak’ of this awful virus simply does not hold true for social care,” said Labour opposition lawmaker Liz Kendall.
A Reuters Special Report published on Tuesday showed that even as the government was promising to protect the elderly and vulnerable from the deadly virus, local councils said they did not have the tools to carry out the plan, and were often given just hours to implement new government instructions.
According to Reuters calculations, the pandemic has resulted in at least 12,700 excess deaths in British care homes.
– Additional reporting by ELIZABETH PIPER
