U.K. Becomes First European Country to Have 100,000 Covid Deaths

More than 100,000 people have died from coronavirus in the U.K., the first country in Europe to surpass the threshold.

Deaths in London, which is at the center of the current outbreak, are running at 84% above the five-year average amid concerns a new strain of the virus is more fatal. There are 37,561 patients hospitalized with Covid-19 across the country.

The scale of the pandemic has exceeded some of the worst predictions made a year ago. Patrick Vallance, the U.K. government’s chief scientific adviser, said in March that fewer than 20,000 deaths would be a “good outcome” for Britain.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson brought in a new lockdown earlier this month to try to prevent the spread of the variant. That’s helped reduce the average number of new cases in the past week to almost half that of the peak in early January, easing the pressure on hospitals, which have been struggling to cope with the resurgence.

The government has faced criticism for its management of the pandemic, including that it waited too long to impose lockdowns and that it failed to get sufficient stocks of protective equipment for health workers.

“Mistakes have been made,” said Richard Murray, chief executive at The King’s Fund, a think tank focused on health and social care. “Decisions to enter lockdown have consistently come late, with the government failing to learn from past mistakes or the experiences of other countries.”

The U.K. has been rushing to vaccinate the population as it tries to pilot its way out of the health crisis, raising hopes that the worst of the pandemic will be behind it within months. Jabs have already been given to about six million people.

The U.K. measures fatalities that take place within 28 days of a positive test. The country has the fourth-highest mortality rate from the disease, based on deaths per 100,000 people, according to data compiled by John Hopkins University of Medicine. San Marino, Belgium and Slovenia are the worst performers.