WHO: We are seeing an increase in Covid deaths

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Following the lifting of Plan B restrictions last month, the Covid situation in the UK appears to be looking up. However, medical expert Dr Bharat Pankhania pointed out the country’s handling of the pandemic has been far worse than some of our European counterparts.

Germany is one such country that has consistently had fewer Covid cases and a lower recorded death toll than many other European countries including the UK.

The United Kingdom – as of statistics from January 30 – had the highest number of Covid-related deaths in Western Europe, according to Statista. Despite Germany’s larger population, there have been far fewer deaths related to coronavirus than in the UK.

Dr Bharat Pankhania told Express.co.uk: “The UK has not done well. It has not done well at all”.

“It is worrying and shameful that the UK has not done well because similar countries to the UK have done pretty well such as Germany”.

Dr Pankhania believes the UK’s death toll is high because “our healthcare system is always running at low capacity. It’s always running at around 95/97 percent”.

This, he says, is because of a lack of government funding in the NHS, which means it cannot run as effectively as other countries that spend more money on health care.

The UK government “spends considerably less on our health care service compared to Finland, Denmark and Norway” – the countries with the lowest Covid death toll rates in Europe.

He also said the high number was down to a lack of early intervention when Covid first hit the UK back in March 2020.

“Initially, we were not monitoring people looking after themselves at home, so by the time we saw them they were pretty ill.

“We released a lot of older patients into nursing homes to increase bed capacity, which led to a catastrophic loss of life.

“They took their infections with them to the nursing homes. That infection in the nursing home killed a lot of elderly people. Our death rates are high because we mismanaged it such that we brought an infection into nursing homes which led to deaths.

“Shameful. It’s an actual shameful disaster this was done.”

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Elderly people and the vulnerable have undoubtedly faced the worse health impacts of the pandemic but Bharat says in UK clinical settings “we’re not very good at looking after our elderly patients”.

All of these factors, as well as a lack of funding in the national health service, led to “higher fatalities compared to comparable countries such as Germany”, he told Express.co.uk.

Dr Pankhania urged Health Secretary Sajid Javid to invest in public health and preventative measures, which he says ultimately saves “a lot of money” in the long run.

“While I know health care does cost a lot, you’re supposed to care for your population”.

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