How is Britain doing in the battle against coronavirus? Many have repeatedly declared we have the worst track record of any country, with both the highest death rate in Europe and suffering the highest economic hit. Newspaper headlines have constantly loud-hailed our alleged failings, from the shortage of ventilators to putting ourselves at the back of the vaccine queue by not joining the EU’s programme.
The only trouble is that this is just not true. In many ways, the UK’s response to coronavirus is quite literally, dare I say it, world-beating. Clearly there have been many setbacks and hiccups. Clearly there are many lessons to be learned. But just as clearly, we are leading the world in many of the most important ways.
Some of the things where we didn’t lead on in early days, such as ventilator numbers, turned out not to have been that important. Covid patients were being put on ventilators too early, and we now know it is best to hold back mechanical ventilation.
The UK is world-beating on testing, on vaccination and on genome sequencing
But on the most important issues, we got it right.
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