Donald Trump has said the UK would’ve incurred "catastrophic" results had it not abruptly and drastically changed its Coronavirus battle strategy.
"A lot of people were saying, 'let's just ride it out. This is not to be ridden out because then you would have been looking at potentially 2.2 million people [dying in the US] or more…in a relatively short period of time. If you remember, they were looking at that concept - I guess it's a concept if you don't mind death, a lot of death - but they were looking at that in the UK, remember. All of sudden they went hard the other way because they started seeing things that weren't good…It would’ve been very catastrophic if that happened,” Trump said.
— Richard Garland (@richardtgarland) April 1, 2020
He went on to express hope UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will “be fine”, as the premier self isolates after testing positive for Coronavirus.
White House Coronavirus response coordinator Dr Deborah Birx nonetheless raised concerns at the same briefing, particularly in respect of the relatively low number of ventilators in the UK compared to other countries.
“We’re worried about groups all around the globe. I don't know if you heard the report this morning, there are 8,000 ventilators in the UK. If you translate that to the US, that would be like having less than 40,000 ventilators. We have five times that,” she despaired.
— not a supreme court justice (@C0G1TO_ERG0_SUM) March 27, 2020
Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove said 31st March the first consignment of British-made ventilators to treat Coronavirus patients will be rolled out to the NHS from 6th April, with thousands going into production to supplement the 8,000 already deployed in hospitals.
The same day of the announcement, it was revealed a further 393 people had died in the UK after contracting Coronavirus, taking the country's death toll to 1,808.
