LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that Britain was in a “race against time” to launch COVID-19 vaccines, while deaths had broken records and hospitals had run out of oxygen, and his adviser The top doctor said the worst weeks of the pandemic were imminent.
A new, more communicable variant of the disease is now on the rise, with one in 20 people in parts of London now infected, threatening to overwhelm the National Health Service (NHS) as hospitals fill up with patients.
The death toll in the UK has risen to more than 81,000 – the fifth official number in the world – while more than three million people have tested positive.
In an attempt to overcome the pandemic and try to restore some normalcy by spring, the UK is launching the largest vaccination program ever, with fires that will be offered to around 15 million people by mid-next month. .
“It’s a race against time, because we can all see the threat facing our NHS, the pressure it is on, the demand in intensive care units, the pressure on ventilated beds, even the lack of oxygen in some places.” , Johnson said on a visit to a vaccination center in Bristol in southwest England.
“It simply came to our notice then. The worst thing now for us is to allow success in implementing a vaccine program to generate any satisfaction with the state of the pandemic. “
The government’s chief medical adviser, Chris Whitty, previously said the situation should deteriorate.
“The next few weeks will be the worst weeks of this pandemic in terms of numbers in the NHS,” he told BBC TV.
“Everyone is not shocked by the number of people in the hospital who are seriously ill at the moment and who die during this pandemic, I think, they did not understand this at all. This is a terrible situation, “he told BBC TV.
VACCINE TARGET
Health Minister Matt Hancock said there were now more than 32,000 patients with COVID-19 in the hospital, far more than the approximately 18,000 hospitalized during the peak of the first pandemic wave in April.
The Johnson government has set its sights on a mass vaccination program after the United Kingdom became the first country to approve vaccines developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer / BioNTech. He also approved Moderna’s shooting last Friday.
His plan, announced on Monday, envisages the delivery of two million photos to about 2,700 centers a week in England by the end of January, with the aim of immunizing tens of millions of people by spring and all adults have been vaccinated by the autumn.
The first daily vaccination statistics showed that almost 2.3 million people had received the first doses of COVID vaccine and almost 400,000 had received the second dose.
Johnson said more people received the vaccine in the UK than in any other European country, but acknowledged that inoculating 15 million people at the four highest risk levels, including those over the age of 70, and of frontline health workers, with a target since February 15 was “a huge demand.”
“We think it’s achievable, we’re going to throw absolutely everything at it, to do it,” he said.
Opposition leader Keir Starmer, who has repeatedly accused Johnson of being too slow to respond to the pandemic, said the prime minister’s indecision had claimed his life and worsened the economic impact.
Health ministers and chiefs have called on the British to stay home amid fears that some people are not following the rules strictly enough, along with concerns that the virus is spreading in supermarkets.
Hancock said support bubbles, in which households can “balloon” with another if they are single-person or meet other criteria, would be maintained, but that the rules on exercising with someone else could be restricted.
“Where we have to gather them, we will do it,” Johnson said of the rules.
Additional reports by Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton, William Schomberg, Paul Sandle, Alistair Smout and James Davey; written by Michael Holden; edited by Estelle Shirbon, Guy Faulconbridge, Angus MacSwan and Gareth Jones