UK Entering ’Worst Point’ Of Pandemic, Top Health Official Warns

By Staff, Agencies

The United Kingdom is entering its most challenging weeks since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, a top official said Monday, as hospitals face being overrun and morgues fill up.

"We're now at the worst point of this epidemic for the UK. In the future we will have the vaccine, but the numbers at the moment are higher than they were in the previous peak — by some distance," England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty told the BBC, adding that he expects the next few weeks to be the "most dangerous time."

The country, which has already suffered more deaths as a result of the disease than any European nation and recently became the fifth nation on earth to reach the grim milestone of three million cases, is on the verge of seeing its hospitals overwhelmed.

Whitty told the BBC on Monday that there were currently more than 30,000 patients in hospital, compared to 18,000 during the first peak of the virus in the UK in April.

"We're now at a situation where in the UK as a whole, around one in 50 people is infected, and in London it's around 1 in 30," Whitty said. "There is a very high chance that if you meet someone unnecessarily, they will have Covid."

His warning comes with the country barely a week into its third national lockdown. But fears are growing that Britons are increasingly giving up on complying with the rules, as case numbers continue to surge despite the extreme measures.

Whitty stressed that minimizing contact with others will stop the situation from getting worse.

"Every single unnecessary contact any of us have is a potential link in a chain of transmission that will lead eventually to a vulnerable person," he told the BBC. "So, the absolute key is for all of us to think do we really need to have this contact?"

Whitty's intervention comes as the number of daily deaths in the UK remain very high, a point grimly illustrated by the fact that in one county in southern England, bodies are being stored at a temporary facility as morgues there are at capacity.