New Covid figures have revealed the UK per capita rate of deaths is currently the highest in the world, marking another grim milestone in the government’s pandemic response.
Figures compiled by University of Oxford-based research platform Our World in Data show the average of 935 daily deaths in the UK over the last week was the equivalent of more than 16 people in every million dying each day from coronavirus.
That is the highest rate in the world and comes as a bitter blow as the country’s vaccination programme gets ramped up.
BREAKING: The UK now has the highest covid death rate in the world. A horrifying, heart-breaking, appalling fact that shames our country & our Govt. pic.twitter.com/URqGbu0ate
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 18, 2021
Max Roser, a University of Oxford researcher and the founder of Our World in Data, said other countries took quicker and more decisive action in the early stages of the pandemic.
“The last Covid death in New Zealand was in mid-September,” he tweeted.
The southwestern Pacific island closed its borders back in March as the outbreak in Asia worsened. Not content with ‘flattening the curve’ or mitigating the spread of the disease, Jacinda Ardern moved to completely rid the country of coronavirus from the off with tough sanctions.
Eleven months after the first Covid-19 case was found in Britain travel corridors allowing people to enter the the country without self-isolating have been closed.
Arrivals must now take a negative coronavirus test up to 72 hours before departure, and self-isolate for up to 10 days.
Related: Sunlit uplands: A look back over the first 20 days of Brexit
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