From all indications, Britain on Tuesday pushed past Italy as the second most affected country with fatalities after the United States of America as the death toll from Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic complications surged to 32,000. The new toll, which was made known from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and regional health bodies, has not yet been incorporated into the government’s daily figures, which records the current number of deaths as 29,427.
That is still higher than Italy, which on also Tuesday said it has recorded 29,316 virus fatalities to date, but far short of the US where nearly 69,000 have died in the pandemic. However, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab urged against trying to make reliable international comparisons. “There are different ways of counting deaths… we now publish data that includes all deaths in all settings and not all countries do that,” he said at the daily Downing Street press conference.
“Can you reliably know that all countries are measuring in the same way? And it also depends on how good, frankly, countries are in gathering their statistics.” Raab called the lives lost “a massive tragedy” and “something in this country, on this scale, in this way, that we’ve never seen before”. Tuesday’s updated statistics, showing 32,313 total deaths by around April 24, means Britain has probably had the highest official death numbers in Europe for days.
