By presenting his deconfinement plan on February 22, Boris Johnson said he hoped for a return to almost normal for the summer.

But is it really plausible?

"It's going to be very interesting to follow that," said Antoine Flahault to France 24, epidemiologist and director of the Institute for Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva.

According to him, the current conditions could offer the British the opportunity to adopt a "zero Covid" policy. 

"They may now want to completely get rid of the circulation of the virus, by vaccinating their entire population, as they are currently doing, with great dynamism, by closing their borders and by looking more retrospectively for clusters and chains of contamination", continues Antoine Flahault, adding that no country has so far acted in this direction in Europe, unlike several Asian countries.

"The United Kingdom is in a position to implement it now, almost helped by Brexit", border control having once again become possible by simple government decision.

"So far, that has never been the strategy displayed by Boris Johnson, but it could be a temptation in order to be able to live completely normally within the borders of the United Kingdom."

The "procrastination" which cost dearly

This hope contrasts sharply with the worrying situation that this country was experiencing a year ago.

Containment measures were only decreed later.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself admitted that delaying the start of containment was a mistake, according to statements by his close allies, reported by British daily The Telegraph on Sunday.

The United Kingdom was not resolved until late, after countries like Italy, Spain and France.

The British authorities then set themselves the objective of "reversing the trend" in three months.

The British authorities initially opted for flexibility.

But very quickly caught up with the pandemic, which was already killing many people in Italy, France and Spain, the United Kingdom finally resolved to change its strategy in the face of worrying forecasts.

After the closure of bars, restaurants, sports halls, then schools, the ax falls.

"No prime minister wants to take such steps," Boris Johnson said on March 23, 2020, in a short statement recorded from 10 Downing Street.

After ten days of resistance, the British Prime Minister finally announces strict national confinement, in order to "save lives and protect our NHS [the national health service, Editor's note]", and avoid arriving at the same situation as 'in Italy, dreadfully affected by the coronavirus and confined from March 9.

A variant and a reconfinement in extremis

Almost a year after this announcement, the United Kingdom (66.5 million inhabitants) has recorded more than 125,000 deaths, while Italy (60 million inhabitants) and France (67 million inhabitants) have more than 102,000 and 90,000, respectively.

"Very quickly, mortality soared during the first wave in the United Kingdom, to a level much higher than that of other European countries, and in particular of France," explains Antoine Flahault.

"But the UK has been at a higher level of mortality than France and this can be attributed to procrastination in the UK government's decision-making to confine the country at a time which was at an exponential phase of its epidemic. "

Indeed, during the first wave, and despite the confinement, an increase in mortality was observed from April 1.

Two months later, on June 5, it was the only and first European country to exceed the threshold of 40,000 deaths.

After a calmer summer in all European countries, a second wave swept over the continent in October with a very wide spread of the virus and an absence of control of the pandemic, which will see the appearance of the British variant, more contagious.

At the start of January 2021, the death toll in the United Kingdom exceeded 80,000 and pushed the government to reconfine nationally at least until March, after a first reconfinement in London and in the south-east of the England.

On the verge of saturation, the NHS is, according to the government's chief medical adviser, Chris Whitty, facing "the most dangerous situation ever known".

"In Europe, we decide to confine when the health system is really on the verge of implosion," explains Professor Antoine Flahault.

"Boris Johnson confined on January 4 because the NHS had told him: 'we, in three weeks, we will not be able to treat the British properly if we continue on this momentum'".

Massive vaccination and lower mortality

The decision to reconfine the United Kingdom also coincided with the start of a vaccination campaign launched with a bang in a strategy very different from that adopted in France.

Widely criticized for its management of the start of the crisis, the United Kingdom was nevertheless the first state in the world to have given the green light to the vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech and then that of AstraZeneca, starting its vaccination campaign on the 8th. December.

Result: to date, for roughly equivalent populations, nearly 25 million people have received a first dose of anti-Covid-19 vaccine across the Channel, against just over 5 million in France.

Since then, it is clear that in the United Kingdom, where the rate of vaccination is much more sustained than in most countries of the European Union, mortality is decreasing much more quickly.

Also, since the end of January, in the United Kingdom, the number of deaths linked to Covid-19 has been almost divided by ten, according to data from Our world data, whose publications are led by the University of Oxford.

"On the very level of the curve of cases, it is more the confinement that has led to the decrease", explains Antoine Flahault, justifying this by the fact that the curve of new contaminations mainly concerns young people, vectors of contamination in the country, and for which vaccination cannot have played a major role, since the United Kingdom, like other European countries, has vaccinated the oldest people as a priority.

"On the other hand, very few vaccinated people end up in the hospital, so there is a real demonstrated efficacy of the vaccine which is already visible with a notable and very substantial drop in mortality".

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