By the time the government ordered a national lockout on March 23, the virus was out of control and supplies of protective equipment to hospitals and nursing homes were temporarily dangerously inadequate.
Luca Richeldi, the Italian government’s adviser on COVID-19, told a committee of British lawmakers this week that he was “surprised” by Britain’s slow reaction, as Italy “lives a collective tragedy. “
“I had the impression that, in general, what was happening in Italy was not noticed as something that could happen in the UK,” he said.
Critics say the government’s insistence on following its own trail, embodied and exacerbated by the UK’s departure from the European Union in January, has hampered its response.
The UK spent months looking to expand a smartphone app to search for contacts from scratch before leaving it and adopting a formula developed through Apple and Google already used in many other countries. The application was filed on Thursday in England with 4 months delay.
There have been some successes. The British state-funded fitness formula has been confronted; their hospitals have not been overwhelmed, but this was achieved with the utmost charge of deferring regimen surgeries, appointments and screening for cancer and other diseases.
Like other countries, the UK has released elderly patients from hospitals to nursing homes without them for the virus. Thousands have died as a result.
Summer brought a break as the tide of cases receded, which also led to a recovery in the suffering economy. Johnson’s conservative government suggested that staff return to their offices to prevent urban centers from adapting to ghost towns and suggested others return to restaurants at discounts. It worked financially, but possibly it would also have helped bring the virus back.
Since Johnson returned to normal, there was inevitable confusion when he changed course this week and announced that, after all, other people would continue to flee the house, which was accompanied by new restrictions, which added a 22-hour curfew in bars and restaurants and expanded mask requirements.
Critics say the government has been slow to propose widespread use of face masks, as well as being slow to demand quarantines for others arriving from abroad.
But the key to failure, according to many, lies in the coronavirus system.
Britain temporarily expanded its capacity to around 250,000 per day and established a traceability formula with thousands of employees.
But when millions of young Britons returned to school this month, and some returned home with a cough and fever, check applications increased to about 1 million a day. Many other people found that they may simply not book an electronic check or be sent a lot of miles away.
“I don’t think we’d expect to see the genuine mass construction we’ve noticed in recent weeks,” Dido Harding, who runs the show, told lawmakers this week, though many scientists and officials predicted just this.
Led through Harding, a former telecommunications executive married to a conservative legislator, the testing and traceability program is largely run through personal companies, adding Serco corporate outsourcing, an intermediate calling style to succeed in contacts and tell them to isolate the the most. it only succeeds in about 60% of other inflamed people’s contacts, and studies suggest that many other people who are asked to isolate the the other people are not subjected.
“The whole thing is desperately ineffective,” said Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Aptitude at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who said a smart search for contacts like detective work.
“It’s like we put (fictitious detectives) Miss Marple or Father Brown in a hotel room with a single phone line and tell them to solve the murder,” she told The Associated Press.
Some of Britain’s disorders are not unique: the Dutch local fitness government is suffering to respond to the contact search request and, in some more affected areas, other inflamed people are encouraged to count their own touches. developing epidemic fascheck, it can take more than a week to get the results of the verification. In France, new cases shown have exceeded 13,000 a day and the virus is re-emerging in nursing homes.
An obvious exception is Italy, the first Western country affected by the virus, where a strict 10-week blockade has largely tamed the outbreak. Even now, Italians’ respect for masking and social estating is strong, with instances an average of around 1,500 depending on the day.
In Britain, complaints about Johnson’s leadership are increasing.
Johnson is well aware of the danger of coronavirus: he put it under extensive care in April, but it’s an instinctive laissez-faire that likes broad brushstrokes, undeniable slogans, and optimistic messages.
In March, Johnson said Britain could “send the virus package” in 12 weeks. Earlier this month, he said he expected things to return to normal until Christmas. This week, he said there will be new restrictions for six months.
He said he was “deeply and spiritually reluctant to make one of those impositions,” but many scientists claim that more powerful measures will inevitably be needed, especially if the test and tracking formula does not improve.
Meanwhile, polls recommend that government crisis management is declining, and the government fears compliance will weaken.
Concern is unfolding among the prime minister’s unwavering former allies.
The Spectator, a conservative news magazine Johnson used to publish, summed up more than six months as “disorder, debacle, rebellion, change of meaning and confusion. “
“Where’s Boris?” asked the magazine on its cover.