(19 Nov 2021) It takes around nine minutes to walk the length of the heart-festooned memorial wall in London commemorating Britain's COVID-19 victims.
And it takes way longer if you pause every few steps to read the heartfelt messages of love from bereaved families and friends.
Walking along the 6-foot high wall on the south side of the River Thames, directly opposite the Houses of Parliament, is undoubtedly a raw and somber experience for anyone, especially for those who lost a loved one and who think the British government could have done a lot more to prevent the U.K.'s catastrophic death toll during the pandemic.
Officially, the U.K. has recorded around 140,000 coronavirus-related deaths, Europe's second highest death toll after Russia.
The actual number is believed to be higher — around 160,000 — as there was very little testing done in the early days of the pandemic in the U.K. in the spring of 2020.
The National COVID Memorial Wall is dedicated to those who died, with each life lost represented by a carefully painted heart that volunteers freshen up on a weekly basis with long-lasting masonry paint, wipes and gloves.
There's also the odd cake and a cup of coffee. For the volunteers, it's a bit like art therapy: meditative.
"For me I think it has absolutely fulfilled the original intention which was to remind people of the scale of our loss," said Fran Hall, a spokesperson for the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice who lost her husband of three weeks, Steve Mead, in September 2020.
He died a day before his 66th birthday.
"It shocks people, every time we're here people stop and talk to us and quite often they are moved to tears as they're walking past and thank us," said Hall.
Hall makes the weekly trek along with several others to ensure the painted hearts don't fade, and to add inscriptions from bereaved people who can't make the journey to the wall.
The memorial wall was established in March by the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, together with campaign group 'Led by Donkeys', as a visual representation of the scale of the loss of life in the UK.
It contains around 150,000 hearts.
The government has yet to give the wall official status, though Prime Minister Boris Johnson told bereaved families, including Hall herself, recently that it was a "good candidate" to be designated a permanent memorial.
"This memorial means so much to the bereaved, as a lot of us could not have our last goodbyes," said Amanda Herring who lost her 54-year old brother Mark Herring just before the U.K. was first put into lockdown in March 2020.
COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, which has around 4,000 members, has been calling for a public inquiry into the government's handling of the pandemic so lessons can be learned to limit future virus-related deaths.
A parliamentary report has already declared the coronavirus pandemic as "one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced."
After months of deflecting calls, Johnson has confirmed that a public inquiry with statutory powers will start to hear evidence next year and that the bereaved families will have a role in it.
However, the bereaved families think that's too late and watch with horror at the U.K.'s rising infection levels, which are running muuch higher than in countries like France and Germany.
Though the rollout of vaccines has clearly limited the number of people dying from COVID-19 after being infected, the U.K. is still recording around 150 virus-related deaths a day.
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