LONDON (AP) – British hospitals cancel non-emergency procedures and struggle to find space for COVID-19 patients as coronavirus cases continue to rise, despite tough restrictions on reducing a new variant of the rapid spread of the virus .
Another 41,385 confirmed cases were registered in the United Kingdom on Monday. It was the first time that the daily number of reported cases in the country exceeded 40,000, although many more tests are performed than before in the pandemic.
Dr. Nick Scriven, the immediate president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said the growing number of hospitalized patients was “extremely worrying.”
“With figures approaching April highs, the systems will be pushed to the limit again,” he said.
British authorities are blaming a new variant of coronavirus for increasing the rate of infections in London and the south-east of England. They say the new version is easier to pass on than the original, but there is no evidence that stress makes people sick.
In response, authorities have put an area in England, which houses 24 million people, under restrictions that impose the closure of non-essential stores, ban socializing indoors and allow restaurants and pubs to operate only for dining.
Even so, hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the south-east of England are approaching or exceeding the levels observed at the first peak of the outbreak. Government figures show that 21,286 people were hospitalized with coronavirus in the UK on December 22, the last day for which data are available. This is just below the maximum level of 21,683 patients with COVID-19 who were registered in UK hospitals on 12 April.
Dr. Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, described her experience working in a hospital on Christmas Day as “wall-to-wall COVID.”
“Chances are we will cope, but we will cope at a cost,” Henderson told the BBC. “The cost is not to do what we hoped for, which is able to sustain non-COVID activities.”
The UK has reported more than 71,000 deaths among people with coronavirus, one of the highest taxes in Europe. Another 357 deaths were reported on Monday.
Cabinet Minister Michael Gove said more parts of England may need to be placed in the most difficult level of restrictions if the number of cases does not fall. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have also implemented strong blockade measures.
However, there is an increase in confidence aid that could soon be on the way, with rising expectations that UK regulators could authorize a second coronavirus vaccine this week.
British media reports say the Medicines and Medicines Regulatory Agency will give the green light to a vaccine produced by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
The regulator authorized a jab made by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German company BioNTech on December 2, making the UK the first country to have access to a rigorously tested vaccine. More than 600,000 people in the UK have received the first of two photos needed for the vaccine.
If the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is released this week, members of the public could start receiving it on January 4th. The UK ordered 100 million doses, compared to 40 million doses in the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is considered a potential game changer in global immunization efforts because it is less expensive than a Pfizer shot and should not be stored at freezer temperature, facilitating its distribution.
But he had less clear results from clinical trials than his main rivals. Partial results suggest that the shot is approximately 70% effective in preventing coronavirus infection, compared to the 95% efficacy reported for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
But the studies produced two different results based on the dosage regimen used. The researchers said the vaccine was protected against the disease in 62% of those who received two full doses and in 90% of those who received half a dose followed by a full dose. However, the second group included only 2,741 people – too few to be conclusive.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot told the Sunday Times that he was confident the vaccine would work against the new strain and be just as effective as its rivals.
“We think we’ve discovered the winning formula and how to get the effectiveness that, after two doses, is up there with everyone else,” Soriot said.
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