The U.K.’s coronavirus death toll soared passed that of Italy, making it the worst hit country in Europe, as a top British official expressed regret over the lack of testing in the early stages of the outbreak.
While international comparisons are difficult, official data showed there were 29,427 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the U.K., with thousands more suspected. The grim milestone will add to the pressure on Boris Johnson’s government, which has faced scrutiny over what some politicians and scientists have warned was a slow response to the pandemic.
The prime minister ordered a nationwide lockdown at a later stage than other countries, and most controversially of all, the government abandoned efforts to test, track and trace cases of coronavirus in the community. Speaking on Tuesday, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, acknowledged this had made the fight against the virus harder.
“Probably in the early phases, and I’ve said this before, if we’d managed to ramp up testing capacity quicker it would have been beneficial,” he told a parliamentary committee. “It’s clear you need lots of testing for this.”
Vallance insisted it was “completely wrong” to say testing was “the answer” to avoiding deaths, arguing it had to be part of a package of measures. But in recent weeks ministers have dramatically ramped up the U.K.’s testing capacity, from around 10,000 per day at the start of April, to more than 100,000 a day by the end of the month.
Officials now face questions over why they did not boost testing capacity earlier in the year before Covid-19 started to spread freely in the U.K., given the virus was clearly a threat.
To Read More: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-05/u-k-deaths-pass-italy-with-32-000-suspected-virus-fatalities
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