Jacob Rees-Mogg says weather partly to blame for UK's high Covid-19 death toll

The leader of the House of Commons suggested that the climate here was why fatalities were much higher than in South Korea. 

The UK has suffered one of the worst outbreaks anywhere in the world, and 43,081 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 have died. 

The number of excess deaths - how many more deaths there have been compared to the average for the last five years - has now passed 65,700.

Ministers have long said it is too early to compare Britain’s death rate with the rest of the world. 

But speaking in the House of Commons on Thursday morning, Labour MP, Richard Burgon said lessons needed to be learned from other countries.

He said the UK’s deaths per million rate was “shockingly high” compared to the rest of the world.

He told MPs: “We are very near the top of the deaths per million table, and that is a national scandal. Our deaths per million rate is six times higher than that in Germany, 100 times higher than that in South Korea and 150 times higher than that in Australia and New Zealand.”

Burgon asked Rees-Mogg for a debate “on comparisons with other countries’ handling of coronavirus so that we can learn from best practices and help to protect lives in our country”.

Rees-Mogg rejected the call.  

He said: “Every death from the coronavirus, whether it is in South Korea or the United Kingdom, is a tragedy, and the sadness for the families affected is very great and very real.

“However, a wide range of factors have affected death rates in different countries. Even things as simple as the weather may have influenced how the virus has spread, and so may the practices of individual cultures and societies. I think, therefore, that these headline comparisons are not necessarily enormously illuminative.”

It isn’t yet clear if Covid-19 transmission is affected  by the weather and seasonal temperature variation.

Some other coronaviruses, such as the common cold, do spread more slowly during the summer.

However, a recent study led by scientist at Princeton Environmental Institute showed that climate only would become an important seasonal factor in controlling Covid-19 once a large proportion of people within a given community are immune or resistant to infection. 

It also suggested that over the longer term, as more people develop immunity, coronavirus could likely fall into a similar seasonal pattern to the flu and the common cold.