All Covid restrictions in England are now lifted, with a sense of normality coming back to most of society.
In the recently-published “Global Soft Power Index”, the UK moved up from third to No 2 place for 2022's global soft power index of countries worldwide, meaning the UK is second only to the United States in soft power around the world, a measure of our influence, culture, aid and promotion of democracy. See the full index here: https://brandirectory.com/softpower/map
With specific regard to the pandemic, out of 120 countries around the world, the UK Government Covid response was considered 17th best globally.
Of the countries ranked higher in their response many were countries with smaller populations like Switzerland and Singapore. See the full list here: https://brandirectory.com/softpower/map?metric=15®ion=1
The UK was the first country in the world to administer Covid vaccines, and thanks to our NHS we had a world-leading rollout of vaccinations, which has meant that we have kept our residents safe, saved lives, allowed our businesses to thrive, and facilitated economic growth.
Covid is still with us and far too many lives have been lost due to it. There are also still high numbers of infections. We can always do better and improve on past performance and in due course a full Inquiry will look into the who matter very thoroughly.
The latest world economy and employment rates shows that the UK is performing very well post pandemic. As recently published by TradingEconomics, rates of unemployment for selected European countries were as follows:
- Spain 13.3%
- Greece 12.8%
- Lithuania 10.0%
- Italy 8.8%
- Sweden 8.3%
- Croatia 7.8%
- Finland 7.5%
- France 7.4%
- Austria 7.3%
- Slovakia 7.0%
- Slovenia 6.7%
- Portugal 6.3%
- Romania 5.7%
- Belgium 5.6%
- Ireland 5.2%
- Germany 5.0%
- Bulgaria 4.9%
- UK 3.9%
- Netherlands 3.6%
The UK has performed well under the Prime Minister’s leadership throughout the pandemic, including in the following ways:
- The Prime Minister’s proactiveness in securing a reported 22,000 ventilators - when we reportedly previously had just 9,000 – has saved lives;
- The Prime Minister led teams to acquire billions of pieces of PPE and we have increased domestically-manufactured supplies from 1% of all PPE used to now over 75%, this too has saved lives;
- The Prime Minister’s decision to invest substantial amounts in relevant scientific research which identified dexamethasone as an effective medicine has reportedly been estimated to have saved well in excess of 20,000 lives in the UK and saved more than one-million lives globally;
- The Prime Minister’s leadership led to seven Nightingale hospitals built in a matter of days which saved lives;
- The Prime Minister’s imposed restrictions to ensure that at no point the NHS became overwhelmed saved lives;
- The Prime Minister’s leadership which ensured the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine would be not-for-profit and sold only at cost has saved lives;
- The Prime Minister’s decision to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in Covax, donating tens of millions of vaccine doses to the world’s poorest countries, has saved lives;
- The Prime Minister’s decision to send lifesaving equipment – including ventilators - to countries such as India has saved lives;
- The UK becoming the world leader in sequencing the Coronavirus genome in testing for new variants has saved lives;
- The Prime Minister’s leadership in ramping-up testing capacity from around a thousand per day to significantly over a million per day has saved lives; and
- The Prime Minister’s leadership in delivering the most successful vaccine rollout in Europe, if not the world, has saved lives, with the vast majority of adults having received both doses plus a booster.
The following report with figures published in the eminent professional medical journal “The Lancet” may interest readers: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext#figures.
The map, also from The Lancet, shows the global distribution of estimated excess mortality rate due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for the cumulative period 2020–21