Thread by @FLAHAULT

1/14 - “The UK’s weekly death rate stands at 12 per million, three times the level of other major European nations, while hospitalisations have risen to eight #COVID19-related admissions a week per 100,000 people, six times the rate on the continent.”
ft.com/content/345825…

2/14 - “Scientists have urged the UK government to impose fresh coronavirus restrictions in England over winter, as high hospital admission and fatality rates outstrip the rest of western Europe.”

3/14 - “The decision to end compulsory mask-wearing and to pause plans for vaccine passports in England has made the British government an outlier for its management of the pandemic and could account for the worsening trends, according to scientific experts.”

4/14 - “By contrast, Western European countries such as France, Italy and, in particular, Spain have brought down infection rates to their lowest level since the summer of 2020.”

5/14 - “@martinmckee, prof of public health at the LSHTM, said the better picture on the continent showed England “should immediately be activating” its winter “Plan B” of work from home orders, vaccine mandates and legally-enforced mask-wearing indoors.”

6/14 - “These small measures like mask-wearing, distancing, ventilation and an emphasis on homeworking are greater than the sum of their parts,” McKee said. “It really doesn’t take an awful lot to bring this down, as France, Italy and others have shown.”

7/14 - “In Spain, which as recently as July endured the highest infection rate in mainland Europe, case rates have come down 17-fold in the past three months to among the lowest in the continent, even as infections in the UK stay stubbornly high.”

8/14 - “Professor Ravi Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), called on the government to “learn lessons” from European countries that were “more cautious in their opening up”.

9/14 -“We’re just far too reliant on our relatively modest vaccination coverage as our only line of defence,” said Gupta, who added that faster teen vaccination rollouts and more restrictions in classrooms had contributed to other countries’ success in containing an autumn wave.”

10/14 - “In Spain and Italy, for instance, obligatory wearing of masks has remained in schools and both countries have been more cautious in reopening nightclubs than England.”

11/14 - “About 15 per cent of UK adults now say they never wear a mask in public spaces, according to a YouGov poll from mid-October. The figure compares with below 2 per cent in Spain and Italy, and about 4 per cent in France.”

12/14 - “The UK’s greater reliance on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine could also be a factor in higher infection rates, adding urgency to the need for booster shots, according to Prof Neil Ferguson, a leading epidemiologist at Imperial College London.”

13/14 - “The UK has used a lot more AstraZeneca, which particularly against [the] Delta [variant] is much less effective at blocking infect and reducing transmiss than the mRNA vacc. On that functional level of immunity we’re a considerable way behind many western Eur countries.”

14/14 - “François Balloux, director of the University College London Genetics Institute, said a high infection rate over autumn could stand the UK in better stead for winter when hospitals are under even greater strain.”