London, United Kingdom:

UK families of some 240,000 people who died from Covid-19 have hung festive lights on a London wall, a symbol of love, anger and pain ahead of another Christmas overshadowed by loss.

As the fifth anniversary of the global pandemic approaches, emotions still run raw across the UK amid lingering accusations that the then government responded too slowly to the crisis.

Some 240,000 hearts have been painted by hand on the wall, nestled on the banks of the Thames, opposite the British parliament.

Each heart on the 500-metre-long (540-yard) wall represents one of the UK victims of the disease, which shattered and disrupted lives around the globe after being first detected in China in December 2019.

“We put up lights every Christmas, just as a way to reflect and remember those people who are not with us,” said Kirsten Hackman, 58, whose mother died from Covid in May 2020.

“For many of us, there is that empty place at the table this Christmas,” she added.

The wall is a collective “therapy session,” say volunteers.

Since 2019 more than seven million people have been reported to have died from Covid worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. But the true toll is believed to be much higher.

Thousands of messages written on the hearts on the London wall reveal the depth of the emotional toll and scars left by the pandemic on UK lives.

“Mamy, love you forever,” reads one, while another says: “Phil, always in my heart”.

The remembrance wall was originally meant to be temporary, and was constructed without permission in March 2021 in protest at then prime minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the pandemic.

He faced accusations of being too slow to recognise Covid’s threat and then taking too long to lock down the country to try to prevent the spread of the highly infectious disease.

The wall is an “outpouring of love, anger, rage”, Lorelei King, whose husband died of Covid in March 2020, told AFP.

The 71-year-old is part of the “Friends of the Wall” group, a dozen volunteers who come every Friday to clean the monument, repaint the rain-washed hearts and rewrite the messages.

“It’s quite meditative”, she said.

The group continues to draw new hearts as Covid claims new lives.

Wall ‘comforts me’

But on the Friday before Christmas, the volunteers met for another, more joyful mission: to hang lights along the wall.

They illuminated them on Monday, and the decorations will remain in place until the beginning of January.

Nearly five years after the start of the pandemic, the pain remains the same, said King, adding she was one of many who had not been able to grieve properly.

“We weren’t able to have a real funeral,” due to lockdown rules, she explained, referring to the severe restrictions put in place on visiting loved ones in their dying hours, and then from holding large gatherings to mourn their loss.

Instead, she focuses her energy on the wall. “It comforts me. And I don’t want the people we care about to be forgotten,” said King.

“We are all in the same boat”, added Michelle Rumball, 53, whose mother died of Covid in April 2020.

She was there on the first day that some hearts were painted, following a social media call by activist group Led By Donkeys.

Over the next 10 days, hundreds of people who had lost loved ones showed up to add their tribute, despite risking arrest for damaging a listed wall.

“I was very angry at that time. It was a demonstration,” recalled Rumball.

The group is in discussions with the authorities to make the wall, whose upkeep depends on donations, “permanent” and officially recognised, meaning it could be better protected.

And a few days before Christmas, they had a “very positive” meeting, King said.

According to the WHO, more than 232,000 people have died with Covid in the United Kingdom. By comparison, there have been around 168,000 deaths in France.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

“In 2020, deaths around the world rose by 10.8% compared to 2019, and in 2021, they rose by 7.5% relative to 2020.”
| Photo Credit: Reuters

COVID-19 (coronavirus) replaced stroke to become the second-leading cause of death globally in 2021, causing 94 deaths per one lakh population and slashing life expectancy by 1.6 years, an international research published in The Lancet journal has found.

“Disrupting more than three decades of consistent improvements in life expectancy and deaths, COVID-19 reversed this long-standing progress to emerge as “one of the most defining global health events of recent history,” researchers said.

“In 2020, deaths around the world rose by 10.8% compared to 2019, and in 2021, they rose by 7.5% relative to 2020. Death rates too followed a similar trend, rising by 8.1% in 2020 and an additional 5.2% in 2021,” the study estimated.

“Globally, COVID-19 and related deaths were responsible for slashing life expectancy by 1.6 years between 2019 and 2021, even as reduced deaths from infections, stroke, and of newborns, among others, had helped steadily enhance life expectancy between 1990 and 2019,” the researchers found.

“India lost 1.9 years of life expectancy due to COVID-19, resulting in a net gain of 7.9 years of life expectancy between 1990 and 2021,” the study showed. “COVID-19 had a pronounced influence on the reduction in global life expectancy that occurred,” the authors wrote.

The researchers forming the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Causes of Death Collaborators estimated mortality and years of life lost from 288 causes of death across 204 countries and territories for every year from 1990 until 2021. Region-wise, death rates from COVID-19 were the highest in the sub-Saharan Africa.

“In Latin America and the Caribbean, it was at 271 per one lakh population and almost 200 deaths per one lakh population, respectively. The rate was the lowest in southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania at around 23 deaths per one lakh population,” the researchers estimated.

“The impact of COVID-19 on life expectancy was found to be wide-ranging in severity, with Andean Latin America seeing a loss of 4.9 years and the southern sub-Saharan Africa seeing a reduction of 3.4 years, to the east Asia, which witnessed almost no change,” they said in the study.

“The leading cause of death worldwide in 2021 continues to be ischaemic heart disease, as was the case in 2019 and 1990,” the researchers found. The disease is caused by a reduced blood flow to a certain body part due to clotting or constricting blood vessels.

Stroke, at the third position amongst the top five causes of death, was found to be followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at fourth, and other pandemic-related mortality at fifth. COPD is a lung condition usually seen to affect heavy smokers.

The GBD study, providing “latest comprehensive estimates of cause-specific mortality,” gives insights about the global landscape of disease before and during the first two years of the pandemic, revealing changes in disease-burden patterns that followed, according to the researchers, coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, U.S.