In two months, the United Kingdom has gone from an extremely critical health situation to an end to the crisis well advanced.

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Hannah Mckay / AP / SIPA

Monday March 8, English students aged 5 to 11 returned to school.

A first major step in the gradual deconfinement of the United Kingdom which seems to see the end of the tunnel, after having been plunged into a particularly violent health crisis.

How is the country that was for months the most affected and bereaved in the world by the coronavirus on the way to becoming the state which is most successful in its exit from the crisis?

Ultra-strict measures

When the English government noticed the existence of a new ultra-contaminating variant in early January, Boris Johnson decided without too much hesitation to impose a third confinement.

"He had no choice, the health system was too saturated," explains epidemiologist Antoine Flahault.

Unlike France during the second confinement for example, the English Prime Minister decides to close schools, colleges and high schools.

Teleworking is required except in cases of absolute impossibility.

"As always with very strict confinement, the results are rapid and the reproduction rate has fallen below 1," continues the director of the Institute of Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva.

In the next seven days, the number of daily cases is expected to drop below 5,000 and the number of deaths to less than 100. "

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England took risks

"The United Kingdom, like the Americans, took the risk of financing and producing vaccines, even before knowing whether they were going to be effective," notes Antoine Flahault.

Moving less cautiously than the European Union, the United Kingdom has reserved millions of vaccines in different laboratories in June.

In comparison, the EU, which preferred to wait for the first results before investing, did so in November.

Once the testing phases were completed, the United Kingdom immediately authorized the vaccine on the market, without waiting for any validation from Brussels.

Faster, the country has therefore also found itself a priority in deliveries compared to the EU, which is now experiencing delivery delays.

“The risk-taking was very rewarded,” admits the epidemiologist.

An ultra-rapid vaccine strategy

The English health authorities have made the choice, unlike France and Germany, to deploy the vaccine as quickly as possible to a large part of the population.

“They have deployed a very effective mass vaccination policy,” notes Antoine Flahault.

They negotiated more vaccines and spaced the injection time between the two doses to vaccinate even more people.

The result: more than a third of the adult population, or 22 million people, received a dose of the vaccine against Covid-19.

More than 11 million people have a full vaccination.

On March 1, the English Ministry of Health published a preliminary report showing the effectiveness of the two vaccines deployed on the territory: Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca.

The results indicate that a single dose of the vaccine reduced hospitalizations by more than 80% three and four weeks after the injection.

A “zero covid” policy

All these decisions and their consequences allow Boris Johnson today to promise the population that the plan to end the crisis will be "very careful, but irreversible".

When the schools reopened, he hailed "a big step" to get out of confinement which, "we hope, is a roadmap to freedom".

The date of May 17 has been brought forward for the reopening of bars, restaurants and cinema, at best.

For Antoine Flahault, the country could engage in a “zero covid” policy.

“This requires a lot of requirements, because it means closing the borders, reconfiguring cities in the slightest case, even a few days, the time to go up the chain of transmission.

»Preventive rather than proactive measures that are bearing fruit in many Asian countries.

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  • epidemic

  • EU

  • Anti-covid vaccine

  • Covid 19

  • Coronavirus

  • Boris Johnson

  • England

  • Health

  • United Kingdom