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LONDON: London declared a major incident on Friday (January 8) because its hospitals were at risk of being overwhelmed by a highly communicable variant of the coronavirus that is running ‘out of control’ across the UK.
Britain has the fifth-worst official death toll from COVID-19 at more than 78,000, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has shut down the economy and launched vaccines faster than its neighbors in a bid to stop the pandemic.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan of the opposition Labor Party said hospital beds in the capital would run out in the coming weeks because the spread of the virus was “out of control”.
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“We declare an important incident because the threat that this virus poses to our city is at a crisis point.”
London, which competes with Paris for the status of the richest city in Europe, has a population of more than 9 million.
The designation of “serious incident” is usually reserved for serious attacks or accidents, particularly those that may involve “serious harm, damage, disturbance or risk to human life or well-being, essential services, the environment or national security” .
The last “major incident” in London was the Grenfell Tower fire in a high-rise residential block in 2017, when 72 people died.
“The stark reality is that we will run out of beds for patients in the next two weeks unless the spread of the virus slows dramatically,” Khan added, urging more support from the UK central government.
“One in 30 Londoners now has COVID-19. If we don’t take immediate action now, our NHS could be overwhelmed and more people will die.”
FEARS OF THE VACCINE
Khan said there were parts of London where 1 in 20 people had the virus.
Pressure on the ambulance service, which now handled up to 9,000 emergency calls a day, meant that firefighters were being recruited to drive vehicles, and police officers would follow.
The Office for National Statistics estimated that 1.1 million people in England had the coronavirus in the week to January 2, the equivalent of one person in 50.
Britain, the first country to approve the vaccines made by Pfizer / BioNTech and AstraZeneca, approved Moderna’s injection on Friday, hoping to start giving it this spring. It also agreed to buy an additional 10 million doses.
However, Transport Minister Grant Shapps said there are fears that some vaccines will not work properly against a highly contagious variant of the coronavirus that has emerged in South Africa.
“This is a great concern for scientists,” he told LBC radio.
Britain began its third COVID-19 lockdown on Tuesday, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the highly contagious new variant of the virus was spreading so fast that the National Health Service risked being overwhelmed in 21 days.
More than 30,000 people in the UK are hospitalized with COVID-19, which is more than during the first peak in April. The number of infections is expected to rise further due to increased socialization during the Christmas period.
The sharp increase has forced hospital executives to consider moving some hospitalized patients to beds in nursing homes or nursing homes, said the head of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals in England.
More than 2.8 million people have been infected in the UK.
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