Bereaved relatives of the dead expressed anger at Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the Coronavirus crisis, as the United Kingdom’s COVID-19 death toll approaches 100,000.
When the novel coronavirus, which first emerged in China in 2019, slid silently across the United Kingdom in March, Johnson initially said he was confident it could be sent packing in weeks.
But 97,939 deaths later, the United Kingdom has the world’s fifth worst official death toll - more than its civilian toll in World War Two (according to the UK Parliament, about 40,000 civilians were killed in World War Two) and twice the number killed in the 1940-41 Blitz bombing campaign, although the total population was lower then.
Some scientists and opposition politicians say Johnson acted too slowly to stop the spread of the virus and then bungled both the government’s strategy and execution of its response.
Johnson has resisted calls for an inquiry into the handling of the crisis and ministers say that while they have not got everything right, they were making decisions at speed and have among the best global vaccination programmes.
The United Kingdom’s death toll - defined as those who die within 28 days of a positive test - rose to 97,939 on January 24. The toll has risen by an average of over 1,000 per day for the past 7 days.
(Reuters)
