By Ben Kerrigan-
The pressure on the British government for a second national lockdown is mounting, after the number of people killed by coronavirus in the UK was said to have passed 60,000 on Tuesday.
With 367 new Covid deaths were confirmed on Tuesday, the largest number since May, and 265 higher than the previous day, the rolling seven-day average death toll to 200, with 61,469 deaths UK-wide, according to analysis of official data.
Over 9,000 people in the Uk have reportedly in hospital with Covid, and Leeds teaching hospital, one of the main hospitals in the Uk to cancel urgent appointments in order to focus on COVID-19 patients.
Sir Patrick Vallance’s warning last month that the pandemic was growing out of control, and the UK was on course to have 50,000 cases a day by mid-October and 200 deaths a day by mid-November without a significant change in direction has been proven wrong so far.
Confirmed daily cases have not exceeded 27,000, although 8 million people have been placed under the strictest tier 3 measures, with millions more in tier 2.
Zubaida Haque, the former director of the Runnymede Trust and a member of the Independent Sage group set up to hold the government to account is quoted in The Guardian saying: “There’s no question that the government are wholeheartedly failing to not only manage the spread of this virus, but to suppress it. And that’s two distinctive things.
“They are not managing to contain the virus because they are not taking a cross-national circuit breaker approach as Sage suggested in September and Independent Sage also suggested.”
Haque added: “Every scientific advisory group has said to the government you need to have a circuit breaker because their ad hoc tier-by-tier approach is wholeheartedly inadequate. Covid cases are increasing everywhere across the country, not just in the north-west [of England] but also in the south-west. What is appalling there has been no sign of a plan to suppress this virus.”
Haque view is just an opinion because other experts believe a circuit breaker will only delay the spread of the virus, not eliminate. Other scientists have suggested shielding the most vulnerable rather than a full lockdown.
A Guardian analysis has highlighted the fact that the coronavirus hs affected every corner of the UK, with every local authority except two registering at least one fatality- but one fatality is not something to make noise about. Its the multiple fatalities we can look at.
The Isles of Scilly and the Outer Hebrides (Na h-Eileanan Siar) are the only council areas not to have registered a single Covid-19 death since the pandemic hit in spring, official figures show.
According to the Guardian analysis of deaths, Hertsmere in Hertfordshire which borders the three north London boroughs of Barnet, Harrow and Enfield, has recorded the worst cumulative Covid-19 fatality rate during the pandemic, with 178.2 deaths per 100,000.