The United Kingdom pays tribute to the victims of covid-19 on Wednesday, coinciding with the second anniversary of the first lockdown and in the midst of the spike in the number of cases in a country almost totally free of restrictions.
Almost 164,000 Britons died in the 28 days after testing positive for covid-19, although more than 186,000 have coronavirus in their death certificates.
To remind them, a minute of silence was observed at noon in the Scottish Parliament and in hospitals and vaccination centers around the country, on a “national day of reflection” on the initiative of the Marie Curie association.
These dead people “will always be in our hearts and minds,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who on March 23, 2020, decreed the first of the three confinements that the country has experienced.
A few days later, the president contracted the coronavirus and in April spent three days in intensive care during which he said he feared for his life.
At dusk, buildings across the country will light up yellow, such as the London skyscraper Gherkin, Glasgow Railway Station in Scotland, Belfast City Hall in Northern Ireland and the Welsh Parliament.
In England, masks are no longer mandatory since the end of January and positive people do not have to quarantine. The requirement to submit a test and provide contact details to all travellers was also recently lifted.
Other British nations, such as Scotland, continue to impose masks as cases have increased again throughout the country since the beginning of March, and especially in that northern region, where the number of hospitalized patients (2,221) on Tuesday reached a record for the second consecutive day.
In Scotland, one in 14 people became infected in the week ending 12 March, while in England, one in 20 people had coronavirus in the same period, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Friday.
These high levels of contagion are due to the rapid increase of the BA.2 subvariant of omicron.
To protect the population, a fourth dose of the vaccine has been available in England since Monday for people over 75 years of age and immunosuppressed people, a total of about five million inhabitants in a country of 67 million.
pau-acc/bl