UK: Pandemic 'peaks' as deaths exceed 18,000

By Karim El-Bar

LONDON (AA) - British health authorities announced on Wednesday that the countrywide death toll from the novel coronavirus increased by 759 in 24 hours.

The Department of Health reported that a total of 411,192 people have been tested, with 133,495 COVID-19-positive results.

"As of 5pm on 21 April, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 18,100 have sadly died," it said.

Meanwhile, 36 Turkish citizens have lost their lives in the U.K. during the outbreak, according to official figures from the Turkish Embassy in London.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock told parliament earlier in the day that country was "at the peak" of the outbreak, emphasizing the effectiveness of ongoing social distancing measures and that they would not be relaxed in the near future before a number of requirements were met, including a fall in the daily death rate and the prevention of a second wave.

- Virtual Prime Minister's Questions

Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer took part in his first Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) as head of the Labour Party.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is still recovering from the coronavirus, so Starmer was up against Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab who is deputizing for the prime minister.

Due to the social distancing measures, this was also Britain's first "virtual" PMQs, with the House of Commons only containing a sparse handful of legislators, with most taking part via video link.

Starmer pressed Raab on care-home staff deaths due to the coronavirus, as well as testing of potentially infected people.

When Raab admitted that he had no solid figures on the number of workers in care homes who had died, Starmer put him "on notice" and said he would ask the same question in next week Wednesday's session of the weekly PMQs.

Starmer also said the government had promised to carry out 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month, but with just eight days to go, had only carried out 18,000 tests on Tuesday. Raab said the government had the capacity to carry out 40,000 tests per day and was making good progress.

- Testing and tracing

Pressed by lawmakers on the issue of testing -- an area in which the U.K. lags behind other countries in Europe and elsewhere -- Hancock told parliament that the government was "ramping up the availability of this testing and expanding who is eligible for testing and making it easier to access the tests."

The tests are conducted in NHS hospitals, through drive-through centers, mobile units and home deliveries, he added.

He also said that contact-tracing would be introduced soon: "We are ramping up our testing capacity and our capacity for contact-tracing in a matter of weeks, and we'll have it ready to make sure that we can use that as and when the incidence of transmission comes down."

Hancock added that the NHS was also developing a smartphone application for contact-tracing.

The novel coronavirus has spread to 185 countries and regions since emerging in China last December, with the U.S. and Europe being the hardest-hit areas in the world.

Nearly 2.6 million cases have been reported worldwide, with the death toll close to 180,000 and over 696,000 recoveries, according to data compiled by the U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.