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Covid-19: UK to continue lockdown as coronavirus death toll nears 8,000
The London area has the largest number of cases in the UK, followed by the Midlands (including Birmingham, Leicester). The London boroughs with high number of cases include Brent, Barnet, Ealing and Harrow – each with a high presence of Indian-origin people.
It is too early to lift the ongoing lockdown, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said on Thursday as Prime Minister Boris Johnson continued to improve in the intensive care unit, while the UK’s death mounted by another 881 to 7,978.
“Thank you for your sacrifice but we’re not done yet. We must keep going. The measures will have to stay in place until the evidence shows we have moved beyond the peak”, Raab, who is deputising for Johnson, said at the daily briefing. The number of cases rose to 65,077.
“The early signs suggest they are having an impact. We mustn’t give the coronavirus a second chance to kill more people. I know it is tough going but this is a team effort. The measures will have to stay in place until we have got evidence that shows we have moved beyond the peak”.
Chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance said social distancing is helping to stop the virus spreading within the community. There “might even be some flattening” of new cases, he said, because had it not been flattening, there would have been “many, many more” cases.
Meanwhile, initial data and anecdotal evidence of medical professionals suggested that 35% of critically ill coronavirus patients are of Indian and other non-white origin in the UK, with London boroughs with large Indian population figuring among the most afflicted.
The London area has the largest number of cases in the UK, followed by the Midlands (including Birmingham, Leicester). The London boroughs with high number of cases include Brent, Barnet, Ealing and Harrow – each with a high presence of Indian-origin people.
Kamlesh Khunti, a medical expert at the University of Leicester, told BBC: “A lot of people have been concerned about this issue based on anecdotal reports and now this data is showing a signal regarding a higher number of black and minority ethnic populations being admitted to intensive care units.”
NHS doctors who have died so far are all from minority origin, including Jitendra Kumar Rathod. Nurses who have passed away also include some of Asian origin. Their deaths have been highlighted by anti-racism campaigners who hail their contribution to the NHS.
According to Khunti, the reasons Indian and other non-white people figure more in the figures, despite accounting for only 14 per cent of the UK population, include many coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, working in public-facing occupations, holding different cultural beliefs and behaviours or being at high risk of diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
