Chapter 1
What are the risks to health?
[ch 1: page 7]In the early days of the pandemic, the WHO reported that around 80% of people recover from the disease without needing hospital treatment. However, around one in five people infected become seriously ill and develop difficulty breathing and, in the UK alone, COVID has now killed more than 100,000 people.
By 20 January 2021, official government figures showed there had been more than 93,000 deaths within 28 days of a positive test and almost 102,000 deaths had COVID-19 recorded on the death certificate. At this point, the UK had the highest death rate from COVID-19 of any country in the world, with another 1,820 daily deaths announced.