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“The situation in London came to a head, with the virus spreading out of control. The number of cases in London increased very rapidly, with more than a third of patients treated in hospitals compared to the peak of the pandemic last April, “Sadiq Khan announced.
The United Kingdom today recorded 1,325 additional deaths from Covid-19 in 24 hours, the highest number since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and 68,053 new cases of contagion, also a daily maximum, the British government reported on Friday.
Between Dec. 30 and Jan. 6, the number of hospitalized patients in the city increased 27 percent, from 5,524 to 7,034, and the number of people on respirators increased 42 percent, from 640 to 908.
In the past three days alone, 477 infected deaths have been reported in London hospitals. The national health service (NHS) is at risk of overcrowdingwarned the London City Council official.
In some areas of the city, 1 in 20 people contracted the virus, revealed the mayorand ambulance services are responding to 9,000 emergency calls a day, almost double the usual 5,000.
Under pressure, firefighters are already being called in to drive the vehicles and police will be called next, the London official said.
On Thursday, the president of the British public health service, Simon Stevens, said that More than 800 people infected with Covid-19 are hospitalized daily in London hospitals., equivalent to the capacity of St. Thomas Hospital, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in the intensive care unit in April 2020.
Khan says that at this rate the number of hospital beds in London will run out in two weeks, if nothing is done. “The reality is that we will run out of beds for patients in the next two weeks if the spread of the virus does not drastically decrease,” he explained in a statement.
“Unless urgent action is taken, our NHS could become saturated and more people will die.”, stressed the person in charge. “We declare a serious incident, because the threat posed by the virus to our city has reached a critical point,” Khan said.
a serious incident It is defined as an emergency event or situation that requires a special coordinated response between the different public services, having previously been invoked in situations such as the terrorist attacks in Westminster and London Bridge in 2017, and the fire of the Grenfell Tower in June of the same . year, which killed 72 people.The designation of serious incident applies to an emergency situation and is generally reserved for attacks or serious events, which involve “substantial damage, damage, disturbance or risk to human life or essential services, and environmental and national security.”
Sadiq Khan, a worker, has been extremely critical of the Conservative government’s strategy for the country’s National Health Service, which, for the mayor, leaving hospitals on the brink of failure, in economic, material and personnel terms.
The British Statistical Office estimates that 1.1 million people in England contracted SARS-CoV-2 in the week of January 2, the equivalent of one in 50. The recently identified variant of the coronavirus in southern England, which is more contagious than other strains of the coronavirus, will be largely responsible for the rapid spread of Covid-19.
The UK has one of the strongest swings in the Covid-19 pandemic, 78,508 deaths recorded as of Thursday.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,899,936 deaths as a result of more than 88 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
With lusa
