{"id":134257,"date":"2021-01-28T11:25:02","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T10:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=134257"},"modified":"2021-01-28T11:25:02","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T10:25:02","slug":"covid-19-weekly-health-summary-28-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/covid-19-weekly-health-summary-28-january\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19: Weekly Health Summary \u2013 28 January"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Health Summary is part of our Weekly COVID-19 Bulletin, sent every Thursday. You can\u00a0sign up to receive your copy here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Official statistics this week showed<\/a> there have been 100,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. Speaking at the Downing Street press conference, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said<\/a>: \u2018I am sorry to have to tell you that today the number of deaths recorded from Covid in the UK has surpassed 100,000, and it is hard to compute the sorrow contained in that grim statistic.\u2019<\/p>\n

In the House of Commons on Wednesday, he said<\/a> he takes full responsibility for all the actions that Government has taken during the pandemic and promised to learn the lessons of what has happened. Meanwhile, Labour Leader Kier Starmer called the number of deaths a \u2018tragic milestone\u2019 and accused the Government of being slow in its response to the pandemic, including on entering lockdown, distributing PPE, protecting care homes and securing borders.<\/p>\n

NHS Providers said<\/a> it is a \u2018tragedy\u2019 that there have been over 100,000 deaths from Covid-19 and paid tribute to the commitment of NHS and care staff. It added: \u2018We won’t know the true impact of Covid-19 for a long time to come because of its long-term effects \u2013 but, as well as the high death rate, it’s particularly concerning that this virus has widened health inequalities and affected Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities disproportionately.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Health Foundation has argued<\/a> \u2018the scene for the current crisis was set long before the virus arrived\u2019, and suggests that a lack of long-term planning and historic underinvestment in public services led to an inadequate social care system, staff shortages in the NHS, and low capacity in public health. The Foundation has called for a full inquiry on the pandemic, which assesses if health and economic inequalities in the UK have hindered its response.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the Office for National Statistics released figures<\/a> on coronavirus related deaths by occupation. It found that between March and December 2020 there were nearly 8,000 Covid-19 related deaths in England and Wales within the working age population (those aged 20 to 64 years). Nearly two-thirds of these deaths were among men, with men in elementary occupations or caring, leisure and other service occupations having the highest rates of death involving Covid-19. Men and women who worked in social care or nursing occupations had a significantly higher rates of death involving Covid-19.<\/p>\n

NHS Confederation said<\/a> the figures \u2018demonstrate all too clearly the toll the pandemic has taken\u2019 on frontline workers and said that there must be measures to protect workers who are more exposed to the virus. Meanwhile, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has called<\/a> for more detailed information on how Covid-19 is impacting health and care workers, including factoring in ethnicity. RCN Chief Executive and General Secretary Dame Donna Kinnair said: \u2018The loss of life of health care workers is heart-breaking and is felt profoundly by every member of the nursing community\u2026The fact the rate of death amongst nursing staff is significantly higher than the general population highlights the absolute need to properly investigate why this is happening and give them the protection they need.\u2019<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Health and Social Care Committee on Tuesday, NHS England Chief Executive, Sir Simon Stevens highlighted the pressures on the NHS front line in light of the ongoing pandemic. There are just under 33,000 Covid-19 inpatients in hospitals within England over the last two weeks, this is a sharp acceleration from Christmas, where the total was around 18,000. The level of coronavirus rates differs across the country, with the Midlands reporting that 75% of its critical care wards are filled with Covid-19 patients.<\/p>\n

The latest Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission of Coronavirus (REACT-1) survey, published<\/a> today, shows that although infections in England have flattened, case levels remain very high. Professor Paul Elliott, director of the programme at Imperial College London, said<\/a>: \u2018We\u2019re not seeing the sharp drop in infections that happened under the first lockdown and if infections aren\u2019t brought down significantly, hospitals won\u2019t be able to cope with the number of people that need critical care.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said the figures are a \u2018stark reminder of the need to remain vigilant\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s Health Summary contains reaction to the Covid death rate passing 100,000 in the UK, as well as the latest research into risk by occupation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":440,"featured_media":134254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7367,7383,7271],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134257"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/440"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134257"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134261,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134257\/revisions\/134261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}