The death toll from COVID-19 in Britain has exceeded 200,000

LONDON, July 13 (Xinhua) — More than 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 have been recorded across Britain, the latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed on Wednesday.

The grim milestone was reached at the end of June, but was not known until Wednesday due to a delay in registration. By early July, there had been a total of 200,247 deaths from COVID-19, according to the ONS. The numbers include deaths from COVID-19 as well as cases related to the virus.

In the week ending 1 July 2022, there were 11,828 deaths in Britain, 12.1 per cent above the five-year average (1,278 excess deaths), the ONS said.

By early January 2021, more than 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 had been reported across the country. It took more than a year and a half for the death toll to double, and vaccination, a better understanding of how to treat the virus and social distancing measures contributed to fewer deaths, the British newspaper The Guardian wrote.

According to Our World In Data, as of July 12, Britain has one of the highest death tolls from COVID-19 in Europe, with a death rate of about 2,689 deaths per million people, compared with 2,295 deaths per million for Spain, 2,230 for France and 1704 for Germany.

The country’s excess death rate is also higher than other European averages, at 2,070 per million people, more than double Germany’s rate of 1,110.

With testing no longer free, case data is mainly provided through the ONS’ weekly infection survey, which showed in its latest release that the percentage of people testing positive for coronavirus continued to rise across Britain, likely driven by an increase in infections. compatible with Omicron variants BA .4 and BA.5.

At the end of June, the rate of COVID-19 infections in Britain rose by more than 30 percent in a week, with an estimated 2.3 million infected.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist and professor of molecular oncology at the University of Warwick, said that the level of infection with the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants in Britain is likely to peak very soon. .

“At the moment, given the level of infection in the UK, it is a bit of a wake-up call that we are not, as some would have us believe, in the post-pandemic phase of COVID. Now we’re seeing an increase in hospitalizations,” Young said.