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The U.K. is past the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic’s second wave, England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty said on Wednesday, as the number of people in the country having received the first dose of a vaccine passed the 10 million mark.
- Hospital admissions and deaths have been falling throughout the U.K., Whitty said.
- However, Whitty cautioned that the number of infections, although falling, was still “incredibly high,” and he didn’t rule out the possibility of a third wave.
- The number of COVID-19 deaths passed the 100,000 mark last week. The U.K. has the worst death toll among major western countries, with more than 1,600 fatalities per million inhabitants.
- But it is also way ahead of the pack in its vaccination campaign. 15% of the U.K. population has already received a first shot of one of the authorized vaccines. That compares with almost 10% in the U.S., and 2-to-4% in the European Union.
- The University of Oxford is about to embark on the first trial to test the efficacy of a combination of two shots of different vaccines — the AstraZeneca–Oxford and Pfizer–BioNTech ones — to explore whether the mix improves or reduces protection from the virus that causes COVID-19.
- Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would set target dates later this month for the gradual easing of the current lockdown, but Whitty cautioned that pressure on the National Health Service wouldn’t recede before all the over-50s have been vaccinated.
- Globally, more people in the world have now received their first shot (104.9 million) than have been infected by the virus (104.1 million), according to the most recent data.
Read: AstraZeneca vaccine may reduce spread by 67% — and protection remains over 3-month dosage gap
The outlook: The U.K. government seems to be well on the way to erasing the memory of its dismal performance dealing with coronavirus in 2020, with a swift and decisive 2021 vaccination campaign. Barring serious side effects or disappointments, this could have major political and economic consequences.
It is too much for a government that has become cautious after past mistakes to announce firm dates for a lockdown easing. But the fast pace of vaccinations gives the U.K. reasonable hope that there is some light at the end of a long tunnel.
