This archive report was first published on 5 May 2020.
May 5, 2020 - Britain is grappling with the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, with its death toll surpassing 32,000, according to an updated official count released Tuesday.
The new toll, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and regional health bodies, has not yet been incorporated into the government's daily figures, which records the current number of deaths as 29,427.
Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab urged caution against making international comparisons, citing differences in death counting methods and the quality of statistics.
“There are different ways of counting deaths… we now publish data that includes all deaths in all settings and not all countries do that,” Raab said at the daily Downing Street press conference.
He noted that the lives lost were a “massive tragedy” and “something in this country, on this scale, in this way, that we’ve never seen before”.
The updated statistics, showing 32,313 total deaths by around April 24, means Britain has probably had the highest official death numbers in Europe for days.
As the country tries to pivot to a new strategy built around mass testing and tracing infected people and those they may have come into contact with, the true extent of the pandemic's impact remains unclear.
