I AM sick and tired of the news media in this country using the Covid death rate in the US as a way to criticise the presidency of Donald Trump.

The death rate per head of population is higher in the UK than the US but we do not hear the same comments used to criticise our Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

We are approaching 2,000 deaths per day from Covid 19 and this death rate shows to us all that the NHS, the people’s NHS, cannot cope.Why is this?

During the last 12 years, our NHS has been stripped to the bone by a Conservative government’s austerity measures.

Hospitals and wards have been closed, and beds have been lost. Docters and nurses have not been trained to meet the needs ofour population and we are suffering now from a lack of capacity within our NHS because of Government austerity measures.

Our Government has recently decided to erect emergency Nightingale hospitals to meet the increasing Covid 19 demand at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds, but of the Nightingales has ever been used, and some have been dismantled at the time of most need.

Why? Because our Government made a decision to erect these hospitals at considerable cost then realized there was not the NHS staff to man them.

There must be hospitals throughout the country that are not being used to full capacity, an example being my local hospital at Bishop Auckland.

I feel extremely sorry for the many families that have lost loved ones due to the Covid pandemic and send them all my sympathy, and I strongly believe that part of the crisis today within our NHS is due to the Government’s austerity programme imposed on our NHS over the last 12 years.

Will ministers be made to answer for disastrous decisions they have made, both long and short term, which I feel have cost many people their lives.

Peter Richardson, Newton Aycliffe.