After over 26,700 deaths, PM Boris says UK is past peak

The death rate in the United Kingdom from COVID-19 was 26,711 on Thursday, but a slower rate of new infections and decreasing rate of deaths mentioned Prime Minister Boris Johnson to announce that the country is past the peak.

Addressing the daily briefing for the first time after returning to the office, Johnson, who had a brush with death after contracting the virus, said he was “very, very lucky” when he admitted to the intensive care unit but regretted that many people had lost their lives that.

According to PM, “Today the number of Covid hospital admissions is dropping. The number of patients in ICU is decreasing. We have so far achieved in the first and most important task we set individually as a nation. To avoid the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world. Because at no stage has our NHS been overwhelmed”.

Five mega hospitals were soon set up with help from the military, but after admissions decreased, the NHS was left with essential capacity. Numbers released on Friday said the number of cases across settings in the UK was 171,253.

Johnson stated: “And it is thanks to that huge collective effort to shield the NHS that we avoided an uncontrollable and catastrophic epidemic where the reasonable worst-case scenario was 500,000 deaths. And so I can confirm today for the first time that we are past the peak of this disease. We are past the peak, and we are on the downward slope”.

Replying to growing needs that the government announced steps to exit the current lockdown, Johnson said he would set out a “comprehensive plan” next week. He highlighted ongoing efforts to develop a vaccine in the UK.

The University of Oxford and the biopharma major AstraZeneca on Friday announced a not-for-profit collaboration for large scale production and distribution if a vaccine produced by the former currently under human trials succeeds by September.