PIERS MORGAN has said he knows the real coronavirus death toll as he shared an estimate of the fatalities on his Twitter account.
The GMB host took to social media to retweet Chris Giles, the economic editor at the Financial Times who shared the latest estimate of UK deaths. Mr Giles tweeted: “Update: After today’s official statistics on deaths linked to coronavirus, a cautious estimate of all UK deaths up to today 05 May stands at 53,800. A significant upward revision.”
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It comes as reports suggested there had been 29,427 death is the UK, which secretary Dominic Rabb said was “a massive tragedy”.
However, the figures shared by Mr Giles are a steep adjustment to those being released by the government.
Mr Morgan shared the alleged statistics to his 7.4 million followers, who were quick to respond to the bombshell revelation.
One user wrote: “Horrific and completely preventable.”
Another replied: “And then some. A friend who is a virologist at St Thomas’s Hospital has said to me that there will be NO STOPPING this virulent killer as quickly as many believe. The damage it is doing post-infection is horrific, & presenting multiple, rare, complications in so many patients.”
A third commented: “Not including UK unrecorded deaths in January and February where many mortuaries were at capacity levels.”
The government also faced criticism for not including care home in the daily death toll until the end of April.
Until recently, data has been published weekly and a week out of date.
The health secretary Matt Hancock revealed last week that care homes would now be tracked in the same way as hospital fatalities.
It came after weeks of mounting anger that the government were not doing enough to protect care home staff and patients from COVID-19.
Mr Hancock insisted that the policy would be changed to “keep the focus on what is happening in care homes”.
However the health secretary has so far declined to apologise to bereaved families who have lashed out at him for failing to protect their loved ones from dying.
Care home staff members have regularly spoke out about the shortages of personal protective equipment and testing.
Testing will now be expanded to to include people with coronavirus symptoms aged over 65 and members of their households.
Mr Hancock said: “Building on successful pilots, we will be rolling out testing of asymptomatic residents and staff in care homes in England, and to patients and staff in the NHS.
“This will mean that anyone who is working or living in a care home will be able to get access to a test whether they have symptoms or not.”
The UK has been declared the country with the highest number of deaths after it overtook Italy.
Each country has different testing regimes, with Italy conducting more tests than the UK to date.
Speaking at a coronavirus briefing yesterday, Dominic Raab said: “I don’t think we will get a real verdict on how well countries have done until the pandemic is over, and particularly until we get comprehensive international data on all-cause mortality.”
Meanwhile, Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, of the University of Cambridge, said we can be “certain” that all reported figures are “substantial underestimates” of the true number who have died with the virus.
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READ MORE FROM SOURCE: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1278365/Piers-Morgan-news-uk-coronavirus-death-toll-good-morning-Britain-latest-news
