UK Government ‘cost lives’ by not locking down earlier, top scientist claims
Government 'cost lives' by not locking down earlier, expert says (Credit: PA)
2 min read
The UK government “cost lives” by failing to lockdown the country earlier when the coronavirus pandemic hit, a top scientist has claimed.
Professor John Edmunds, who sits on the Government’s Sage advisory committee, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show he believed ministers had been too slow to act and that he had regrets about the action taken.
“I think the data that we were dealing with in the early part of March and our situational awareness was really quite poor and so I think it would have been very hard to pull the trigger at that point, but I wish we had gone into lockdown earlier,” he said.
“I think that has cost a lot of lives, unfortunately.”
But Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the programme there was a “broad range of scientific opinion” on the Sage committee and that ministers had followed the advice of the chief medical officer.
“I am sure, and as I keep looking back on that period, I am sure that taking into account everything we knew at that moment, my view is that we made the right decisions at the right time,” he said.
Prof Edmunds also said he believed the virus infection rate needed to be lower before lockdown condition were eased any further.
"I would still prefer to see the cases come down lower than they are at the moment," he said.
"The ONS survey suggests we're having around 5,000 new infections every day and that's just in the community and just in England - excluding Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland - that's excluding all the infections occuring in hospitals and care homes which are very significant numbers still.
"And so I would like to see the cases come further down, that's my own personal opinion. But the government have to weigh these things up, of course they do."
His comments come amid reports that Boris Johnson is looking to ease the lockdown quicker due to the threat of mass unemployement if the economy remains frozen over summer.
But the expert, who previously described the easing of lockdown measures as a political decision, warned there is still "a long way to go".
"If we relax then this epidemic will come back very fast. We do need to be really cautious," he added.
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