Even as countries race to vaccinate their populations, the covert 19 death toll continues to rise at an alarming rate.

New strains of the coronavirus, which scientists believe um or transmissible, have been blamed for the surgeon infections Across the world, countries are facing a second or even third wave of infections, with many governments tightening even further.

The lockdowns already in place one country that's been plunged into crisis by a new strain of the coronavirus is the United Kingdom.

There, the number of cases and deaths has been skyrocketing since December.

Many hospitals are overwhelmed with covert patients and, as a result, are no longer able to carry out other operations.

As D.

W.

Charlotte Chelsom Pill reports, this is taking a huge toll mentally and physically, both on the population and the medical workers trying to save lives.

I've never seen so many ambulance is queuing and I've never spent such extended periods of time with people waiting for a space over the last 34 weeks.

The majority of patients are now Corona virus, every region in England has more people than hospital now than they did in the first wave in the spring.

In our case, we've gone up by double.

The number of patients were still in London, admitting the equivalent of a really big hospital every single day whilst having higher numbers of staff on frontline staff who are off sick or isolating or tested positive themselves.

I've just finished 10 days of isolation because my wife tested positive eso.

She's also a paramedic.

The personal protective equipment that we were wearing waas from our perspective not quite enough on by a number of our friends and colleagues were in the same situation and and they've also tested positive over the last few weeks.

I think the impact off the new variant has bean immense.

It is just more infectious than 50% more infectious where we were beginning of December, thinking we had weathered the storm.

Suddenly we had a surgeon numbers so huge we couldn't have imagined it would be bad on.

That's because his new variants spread so easily spread like wild fire.

On board this focus a lot by surprise.

The new variant just made it absolutely explode Onda again you know, we waited too long to stamp down on it.

There's still more to come from this wave of the pandemic.

We expect mortality will go up.

We're seeing far more people being admitted.

Thio intensive care units that are now becoming overwhelmed.

A lot of hospitals in the Southeast now canceling what are called 28 day cancer surgeries the people who have had their surgeries canceled on how having to wait at home knowing that their tumors growing and for some of them, by the time it's safe again, they might not be operable anymore on that, they've lost that window, you know?

So I mean that to me is a kind of kind of a mental torture.

OK, proposal, a lot of people that find it very tough.

One of my friends said.

You know, he was just helping someone colleague having a panic attack the other day that people having nightmares about it really hard thing about being stuck a hospital for five hours.

Is that a lot of time that you're there?

You're hearing your colleagues in the control room asking for ambulances to be available to get you to other emergencies and to people that need your help and you can't go there constantly in a situation where they know they're not doing the best for their patients or they're trying their best.

But they're just not in a position to be able to do that.

And that's something that people are wrestling with Quite a lot is knowing that, you know, they might have been able to do some or or if they had have arrived earlier than they might have been able.

Thio change the outcome for a particular patient, one short having a toll up and down the country.

But I don't think we have a choice.

We just do our best to carry on.

That's what we train we're trying to do.

I'm very privileged to work with people who feel that way is hard and it's it's taken its toll.

But we know that we're doing the best we can in the circumstances.

Andi, if we didn't go out, then more people would would die and would suffer as a result of not having uh, people working on the front line Well.

Meanwhile, Germany has passed the two million mark in recorded coronavirus cases.

It comes as Chancellor Angela Merkel pushes for a stricter lock down.

Merkel has told top officials from her party that she wants quick action to stop the spread of worrying new coronavirus variance well.

In other developments in the pandemic, France is to impose a nationwide 6 p.m. curfew starting on Saturday.

From next week, everyone traveling to France from outside the European Union will have to show a negative test and then isolate for seven days.

Three U.

K has been travelers from South America and Portugal over concerns about a virus variant that has emerged in Brazil.

It comes as Brazil's health minister says hospitals in the Amazonian city of manuals are running out of oxygen to treat covert 19 patients.