Scientists warn of 50,000 more Covid deaths as they slam ‘poor decisions’
“A legacy of poor decisions” led the the UK to have one of the highest coronavirus death tolls in the world, scientists have said, as they warned of 50,000 further deaths.
Britain yesterday passed the “grim milestone” of 100,000 Covid-related fatalities, marking the fifth-highest death toll in the world.
It makes the UK the fifth nation in the world to reach six figures, following the US, Brazil, India and Mexico.
The Prime Minister yesterday said Britain’s death toll was “an appalling and tragic loss of life.”
“All we can do now is work together with the tolls that we have with the stay at home principle, plus the vaccines, to defeat the virus,” said Boris Johnson.
The PM added that the government had done “everything it could” to save lives during the pandemic.
However, scientists slammed the comments, warning that the UK is likely to see its total death death from coronavirus hike at least 50 per cent.
Professor Linda Bauld, public health expert from the University of Edinburgh, said the UK’s current position was “a legacy of poor decisions that were taken when we eased restrictions”.
“Unfortunately the number of people dying is not going to decline quickly, and even then it will remain for a while at a really high rate so we’re absolutely not out of it,” she added.
Professor Calum Semple, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said there could be another 50,000 deaths this year “before this burns out”.
“The deaths on the way up are likely to be mirrored by deaths on the way down and each one again is a tragedy, and each one represents also probably four or five people that survive but are damaged by Covid,” he said.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said he did not believe Johnson had done everything possible to bring down the UK’s Covid death toll.
“It’s just horrendous on every front… I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I just do not believe that Boris Johnson did everything we could, I just can’t accept that,” he told BBC’s Today programme.
“We all accept these are challenging times for any government, this is a virus which has swept across the world with speed and severity and it continues to spread ferociously … But monumental mistakes have been made, we have had a litany of errors in the last 12 months, and he didn’t have to make these mistakes.”
It comes after Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, yesterday said the UK should not expect the current daily death rate to come down for “some weeks”. Britain’s average seven-day death rate currently stands at 1,102.
“We will see unfortunately quite a lot more deaths before the vaccines start to take effect,” Whitty added.
He added that new coronavirus mutations have accelerated the UK’s death toll in recent months, adding that they changed the situation “substantially”.