Professor Philip Banfield, chairman of the board of the British Medical Association, said: “This terrible loss of life should serve as an important reminder that Covid-19 has not gone away and remains a serious threat to public health.” Representatives of nursing home residents said reaching the milestone death toll was “heartbreaking”. With hospital admissions from Covid tripling in the UK since the end of May, Jo Goodman, co-founder of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign, which represents more than 6,500 families, said: “Two hundred thousand deaths is a tragedy and yet another damning milestone in the government’s handling of the pandemic. “Four hundred and fifty-four people died within 28 days of a positive Covid test just last week, and yet the government refuses to take even basic measures to protect people from the virus. By forcing people to pay for tests, not enforcing adequate sick pay or taking steps to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in hospitals, the government is effectively throwing the most vulnerable in our society to the wolves.” Professor Rowland Kao, chair of veterinary epidemiology and data science at the University of Edinburgh, predicted “much more stressful conditions” in autumn and winter and called for greater precautions. “Treating it as if it’s passed is not helpful, and in doing so we cause a significant but relatively low level of infections to persist,” Cao said. “As we head into autumn and winter and expect more flu and more Covid, the risk is high that we will face much more stressful conditions. Anything we can do to keep things low now is helpful. I mean testing, isolating if positive, and respecting physical distance, especially in high-risk environments. FFP2 masks in these settings would be a good idea, although this is also a personal choice.” Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Jim McManus, president of the Association of Public Health Directors, urged people to get the booster shots when he invited them and said the 200,000 death milestone was “tragic”. The government said on Wednesday it was “working hard to reach those people who were still unvaccinated against Covid, including using mobile and mobile vaccination clinics … and providing personalized messages from trusted voices such as faith and its leaders community, to different people. get the vaccine.” Figures from the World Health Organization show the UK has the seventh highest death toll in the world and the worst of any European country except Russia. Judged by deaths per capita, the UK’s rate is better than that of Italy and Belgium and much of eastern Europe, but worse than that of France, Spain and Germany, WHO figures show. On Thursday next week, Heather Hallet, the chair of the UK public inquiry into Covid-19, will make her opening statement, setting out a timetable and how she plans to conduct the inquiry. Helen Wildbore, director of the Association of Relatives and Residents, which represents users in care homes, said the 200,000 death milestone was “another reminder of the government’s mismanagement of the pandemic”. Scotland, the US and England are the three countries with the highest rate of Covid deaths among care home residents, in a list of 21 countries analyzed by an international network of academics. “From the neglect of the social care sector in the first wave, to people living in care being the only group still subject to restrictions while the rest of the country is fully back to normal, older people have been frustrated by the same systems designed to protect their rights,” Wildbore said. “With a public inquiry now underway, we will push for the answers they deserve and ensure their voices are heard.” David Hayman, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “The question that remains is whether this disease will continue to be a serious disease for people who are obese and comorbid despite having get vaccinated. So far the vaccine seems to be doing a pretty good job on them. “The pandemic was tragic as there were so many people who died around the world, but at the same time we were very lucky to have a vaccine as quickly as we did and hopefully everyone will benefit from the vaccine [boosters].”
