Britain, which is now in the grip of a national coronavirus lockdown, has Europe’s highest COVID-19 death toll that currently stands at more than 90,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Right now, the UK has the highest daily coronavirus death rate in the world figures collated by an Oxford University research platform have revealed.
According to Our World in Data, an average of 935 daily fatalities in the past week was the equivalent of more than 16 people per one million dying each day from COVID-19.
The figures were published after UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stressed that even though he “completely” understands Britons want to return to normal life as soon as possible, “it does depend on things going well”.
“It depends on the vaccination programme going well, it depends on there being no new variants that throw our plans out and we have to mitigate against, and it depends on everybody, all of us, remembering that we’re not out of the woods yet”, Johnson underscored.
The statement followed Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab saying late last week that the government hopes to ease some lockdown restrictions before the end of February as London presses ahead with the early rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine.