LONDON – Britain reported 218,724 coronavirus cases in the latest 24-hour period, exceeding 200,000 daily cases for the first time since the start of the pandemic, according to official figures released Tuesday (Jan. 4).
This brought the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 13,641,520.
The country also reported a further 48 coronavirus-related deaths. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 148,941, with 14,126 COVID-19 patients still in the hospital.
Earlier Tuesday, British Health Secretary told Sky News that there’s nothing in data at this point that suggests that Britain needs to move away from Plan B, which includes guidance to work from home and mandatory face masks in most public indoor venues.
The British government is not planning to cut the isolation period from seven days to five days, as the United States has done, he said.
Meanwhile, multiple National Health Service (NHS) trusts have declared critical incidents in their hospitals owing to staff absences.
Kevin McNamara, chief executive of the Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Swindon, said that following a “tough few days” an “internal critical incident” had been declared.
It is because of “sustained high levels of demand, COVID and non-COVID, and availability of beds,” McNamara added. “We always knew that January would be a tough month for everyone and our modelling shows that it is likely to get tougher in the next few weeks.”
NHS will be under “considerable” pressure in the coming weeks amid the wave of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday (Jan. 3).
“No question Omicron continues to surge through the country,” Johnson said at a vaccination center. “I think we’ve got to recognize that the pressure on our NHS, on our hospitals, is going to be considerable in the course of the next couple of weeks, and maybe more.”
More than 90% of people aged 12 and over in Britain have had their first dose of vaccine and around 82% have received both doses, according to the latest figures. More than 59% have received booster jabs or the third dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia, and the United States have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines. (Xinhua) – bny
