A Year On, How Pandemic Still Creating Havoc for The UK And Europe
It has been exactly a year since the world was hit by a deadly health disaster which affected everything around us. The Covid-19 pandemic ravaged lives and livelihoods and restricted the world to be indoors. The UK had to go through three national lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus, and the restrictions crippled public-facing industries.
A recent study has found that the restrictions during the three lockdowns have cost the economy a whopping £251 billion. The study conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that gross value added (GVA), which is an estimation of all the goods and services created in an economy, without including the raw materials and input costs required for the delivery of the same, was less by over £250 billion than what was estimated in the pre-pandemic times.
Some of the poorer parts of the UK were the worst affected, however, London managed to safeguard itself. London’s contribution to the UK’s GVA was only a little less than a quarter of the country’s GVA, but it suffered 20.5 per cent of the losses. This was possible because sectors like insurance and finance and communication and information – London’s mainstays – managed to work out of homes smoothly. A separate study has found Britain’s economic recovery could get compromised because of a lack of digital skills as the number of young people taking IT courses declined sharply in the last one year.
The third wave:
And it is not just the UK that is struggling with the pandemic. Europe is staring at a probable third wave, and to contain its spread, authorities in various countries have begun reimposing lockdowns and restrictions.
France Prime Minister Jean Castex imposed a lockdown for a month in Paris and other areas where cases were going up. It has allowed essential businesses and schools to function. Italy, which was one of the worst affected countries last year, has brought out fresh restrictions as cases increased. All areas with over 250 cases per 100,000 people would be declared red zones and are under strict restrictions. The whole country would be in lockdown at the Easter weekend. Italy’s weekly average of new cases has been on the rise since March and has been reporting over 360 deaths each week.
Germany has also announced an extension of lockdown till 28 March. Bars, sports and leisure venues, restaurants have remained shut since November. The government has begun easing restrictions since 8 March. Areas with a smaller number of cases would be allowed to reopen non-essential services.
Vaccination rollout:
Europe’s Covid crisis has been exacerbated by complications over the vaccination drive. Several countries have discontinued using the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine as fears spread over blood clots among recipients. However, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany have since then said they would resume its use; the vaccination rate in Europe is not yet on the level as that of the US.
PM Boris Johnson has warned that a similar third wave as is being seen in Europe could soon strike the UK. He said that past experiences have taught us that when neighboring countries get affected by a sudden wave of infection, it does not spare the UK either and may affect it even severely. He said that he has been in touch with the European nations.
He added that the UK is committed to a quick and fast vaccination programme but highlighted that vaccination drives are essentially international programmes and do require cooperation on an international level.
On Saturday, a total of 844,285 first or second doses were given to people, which was up from 711,157 given last Friday. Over 27.6 million people, which is more than half of UK’s adult population, have been vaccinated with at least one dose.
The UK’s health ministry recently announced that it was working to come up with a new testing technology. The new technology would be able to identify whether positive samples have any of the more dangerous variants and could help in getting faster results.
Known as the genotype assay test, it could reduce the detection time by half and used along with normal testing procedures to identify cases rapidly.
As part of lockdown easing norms, the UK government is also now focused on reigning in new variants. As part of its plans, once a strain gets identified, increased contact tracing and testing could be deployed to contain the spread.
Both Europe and the UK are struggling with the pandemic and currently the new strains. Not only the health infrastructure is strained, but the pandemic is draining the economic resources of countries. But the biggest challenge for the UK and Europe is getting enough vaccine jabs. Europe has threatened to withhold vaccine shots for the UK by rejecting AstraZeneca’s export authorization to the UK till the company fulfils its delivery commitments to the EU. This bitter war over vaccination rollout could make relations between the two countries acrimonious.
By Kunal Sawhney, CEO, Kalkine Group
