Alwaght- Britain has suffered the second-highest rate of excess deaths per million in the world among countries with comparable data during the Covid-19 pandemic, provoking outrage from Britons.
According to the Financial Times, the UK has registered 59,537 more deaths than usual since the week ending March 20 – just before the start of the lockdown. It equates to 891 people per million killed directly or indirectly by the deadly. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Until Thursday, the UK had a higher rate of death than in any country for which same quality data exist. However, Spain made a revision to its mortality estimates, adding 12,000 to its toll of excess deaths from coronavirus in a one-off adjustment to 43,000. This increased its death rate to 921 per million.
The shocking statistics come as Britain is still recovering from the fallout of the Dominic Cummings saga. More than 60 Tory MPs have reportedly defied PM Boris Johnson’s call to “move on” from the scandal surrounding his special adviser, to speak out against him – with 43 insisting that Cummings must resign or be sacked for flouting a number of lockdown rules.
TV presenter Piers Morgan, who has been a harsh critic of the UK government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, branded the figures “horrifying.” Some suggested that people should stop obsessing over Cummings, as the UK topping the world excess death charts was “a far bigger scandal” and “a total unmitigated disaster.”
However, there were others who did want to point to the PM’s chief aide when it came to who was to blame for the disastrous death toll, with one commenter insisting that “This is the shameful Johnson, [Matt] Hancock, Cummings legacy.”
The paper says that data was compiled from national statistical agencies for 19 countries whose information was good enough to make authoritative comparisons. The figures include all of the European nations hit severely by Covid-19.
