LONDON (REUTERS) – As Britain’s Covid-19 death toll approaches 100,000, Home Secretary Priti Patel said on Wednesday (Jan 20) that the numbers were horrendous but that it was not the time to look back at the government’s possible mismanagement of the crisis.

Britain’s official Covid-19 death toll is 91,470 – Europe’s worst death figure and the world’s fifth worst after the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for reacting too slowly to the crisis, failing to supply sufficient protective equipment and for bungling the testing system though Britain has been swift to roll out a vaccine.

“Every single death is deeply tragic,” Ms Patel told LBC when asked why Britain’s death toll was so large. “There’s no one factor as to why we have such a horrendous and tragic death rate.

“I don’t think this is the time to talk about mismanagement,” she said when asked by the BBC if the government had mismanaged the crisis. When pressed on the international comparisons of death tolls, she told LBC the data was “not comparable”.

The British government reported a record rise in deaths on Tuesday, with 1,610 people dying within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test. Currently, 37,946 people are in hospital with Covid-19, 3,916 of them on ventilation.

Currently, Britain has vaccinated 4.27 million people with a first dose of the vaccine, among the best in the world per head of population. The Covid-19 death toll and the level of hospital admissions mean it is far too early to speculate about when the lockdown may be lifted or eased, Ms Patel said.

“We are still in a perilous situation,” she told Sky. “We have a long way to go.”

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