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The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England have announced the latest reported figures for cases of COVID-19 (138,078 in the UK) and deaths from COVID-19 (18,738 in the UK and 16,786 in England).
Prof Jim Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, and Professor of Structural Biology, University of Oxford, said:
“The reduction in deaths and drop in the pressure upon hospitals are a welcome respite. As deaths continue fall, we need to remember this is only the first round. When all the deaths are counted, this first wave of COVID-19 will have brought tragedy to families across the UK. We owe it to those families to learn the right lessons from this awful experience and do better. A large number of tests on their own will not solve the problem; what is needed is a holistic approach seen in South Korea. Germany, like the UK, has controlled the virus by locking down. I believe that the superior testing regime in Germany may have allowed better tracking of the epidemic at the start. Thus Germany may have locked down earlier in the disease cycle and thereby reduced their death toll. Even a few days, when the virus is rapidly spreading, can have large consequences. The UK will face any future rounds with an improved testing infrastructure, a much better understanding of the dynamics of the pandemic and insights into how effective various social measures have been. We are seeing positive hints from passive immune therapy trials that if proven could reduce the number of deaths in a future wave. There are unprecedented efforts to develop effective drugs that I feel sure will bear fruit. Vaccine trials are now underway and we hope they will be successful. Until a vaccine rids us of this disease however, all our efforts should be laser focussed on actions we can take now in the UK to reduce the death toll in any subsequent wave.”
DHSC – https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1253321773480697856
NHS England – https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
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