The United Kingdom’s coronoavirus death toll rose 24 per cent to 2,921 as of April 1.
As of 0800 GMT on April 2, a total of 163,194 people had been tested of which 33,718 tested positive, the health ministry said.
“Of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 2,921 have sadly died,” the ministry said.
NHS England said that of the 561 people who died in English hospitals in the previous 24-hour cycle, 44 had no underlying health conditions. The age range of those without underlying health conditions was 25 to 100 years old.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson meanwhile promised to ramp up coronavirus testing after his government faced criticism for being slower than some European peers to roll out mass checks for front-line health workers and the population.
Britain initially took a restrained approach to the outbreak but changed tack after modelling showed a quarter of a million people in the country could die.
Johnson imposed more stringent measures, effectively shuttering the world’s fifth-largest economy, but the government has faced widespread criticism for having too few ventilators and too little testing.
“We’re also massively increasing testing,” Johnson said in a video message from a flat in Downing Street where he is self-isolating after testing positive himself.
“As I have said for weeks and weeks, this is the way through: this is how we will unlock the coronavirus puzzle, this is how we will defeat it in the end.”
Johnson’s message, posted on Twitter, followed pledges from his ministers to accelerate both antibody and antigen testing in days ahead after a slew of sometimes contradictory statements on numbers already checked.
While Germany has been testing about 500,000 people a week, Britain’s current capacity is about 13,000 a day, a figure the government said it was aiming to double by mid-April.
More than half of Britons think Johnson’s government was too slow to order a lockdown, an Ipsos MORI poll showed.
Tests are essential for both fighting the virus and nursing the economy back to health after what is expected to be the worst quarter in around a century.
Testing frontline health staff allows those with immunity to return to work while broader testing of the population would allow tens of millions of idled workers back to work.
Showing just how bad coronavirus could be for the economy, British Airways said it was in talks about suspending 32,000 employees.
“Everybody involved is frustrated that we haven’t got to the position yet that we need to get to,” Paul Cosford, emeritus medical director of Public Health England, said of current testing levels.
When asked about the possibility of immunity certificates, Johnson’s spokesman said Britain was watching what other countries were doing.
REUTERS
