The fortieth Day: 1 May 2020 (177,454 confirmed infected, 27,510 died, in total)

"Every day I get a message from someone in my community telling me of people who have died." – Kamrul Islam

Deaths are not news during the days with the COVID-19 virus.

One man was lying down unconsciously on the pedestrian way just outside our gated community this afternoon. Police and ambulance soon came to handle the case. We do not know whether this is connected to the coronavirus or not, but it is scary. We just learnt from a breakdown that there are already 4 victims in our neighbourhood. Wo do not know whether there are confirmed or death cases in our gated community, for privacy concerns this is not revealed to the public.

Recent statistics show that the UK now has the second biggest death toll in Europe, just hundreds after Italy. It also ranks third in the whole world for death toll, and fourth in term of mortality rate.

It is incredible that this first-ever modern industrial country – being the fifth biggest economy now – is so fragile in front of an epidemic disease. A 2019 report said UK healthcare ranked only 16th out of 35 European countries, below much smaller countries like Estonia, and keep falling for years.

The own experience of our family (before the coronavirus outbreak) is that seeing a doctor in London is not quite an easy thing: unless it is an A&E (Accident and Emergency) case, one cannot go to a hospital directly, but has to first make an appointment maybe a week ahead with his registered GP (General Practitioner, working at somewhere like community clinics in China) and can only be referred to a hospital by the GP when he considers necessary. Even so, a long waiting is still a must at both GP’s and hospitals. Maybe that is why people would rather choose private clinics when affordable – totally opposite to the situation in China, where high-quality medical services are believed to be accessible in big public hospitals only, and private clinics are being prejudiced against as being less reliable.

But there is one thing in common: health workers in both countries have been standing on the line between living and dead and bravely fighting the virus for months. Some of them are better protected, some are not, for shortages of protective equipment happened here and there. On this extremely special International Workers’ Day, I just wish them the very best luck and getting back safely from the frontline soon.