UK Covid Booster Policy Works to Avoid New Wave Despite High Death Rate

The U.K.’s success at avoiding the latest virus emergency ripping across the European continent has come at a price. Thanks to an aggressive booster campaign for older and vulnerable people, the country has managed to keep hospitalization and death rates relatively steady without imposing fresh restrictions. Meanwhile, lockdowns are being reimposed elsewhere in a bid to damp down another Covid wildfire. However, more U.K. residents have died of Covid per capita than in most other western European countries, despite earlier access to vaccines than in the European Union. “The U.K. has been ‘running hot’,” said Devi Sridhar, a professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “We act like Europe is so much worse, but we’ve just accepted a higher death toll and higher infection rates for longer.”