Matt Hancock says government made no mistakes on coronavirus lockdown timing
Health secretary Matt Hancock has defended the decision to not start the coronavirus lockdown earlier, after a government scientific adviser said the delay cost lives.
Hancock said today that the government “took the right decisions at the right time” and that no people lost their lives by not locking down earlier.
The UK went into lockdown on 23 March, which was comparatively late compared to other western European countries.
There was confusion at the time over whether the UK would lock down or adopt a model similar to Sweden, which has avoided a lockdown in an attempt to establish “herd immunity” to Covid-19.
Professor John Edmunds, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), told the BBC today that the delay in locking down “cost a lot of lives unfortunately”.
The UK coronavirus death toll surpassed 40,000 on Friday, putting the country only behind the US in total number of fatalities.
However, Hancock denied that any lives were lost due to not locking down earlier or that any mistakes had been made.
Speaking to the BBC, Hancock said: “I think we took the right decisions at the right time, but there’s a broad range of opinion on Sage and we were guided by the science, which means the balance of that opinion, as expressed to ministers through the chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser.
“I spend most of my time trying to rid this country and rid all of us of this ghastly virus – most of my time and energy I devote to looking forward as well as of course trying to learn lessons about what happened in the past.”
Edmunds said that the decision not to lock down earlier would have been difficult, but was a mistake in hindsight.
“We should have gone into lockdown earlier, but I think it would have been hard to do it,” he said.
“The data we were dealing with in early parts of March and our situational awareness of where it was was really quite poor, so I think it would have been very hard to pull the trigger at that point, but I wish we had.
“I wish we had gone into lockdown earlier, I think it has cost a lot of lives unfortunately.”
The government has now begun to ease social distancing restrictions across the country, with non-essential retail shops to open on 15 June.
Some reports have claimed that the country’s R rate, the rate of which the coronavirus is growing, has increased since the lockdown was eased.
There has been speculation that the R rate is now greater than one in some areas, which means that the number of infections is growing.
The government has said it estimates the countrywide R rate is beteen 0.7 and 0.9.
“You can’t rule it out that it could be even at one in some regions, but I would stress overall the assessment is probably still below one everywhere on average,” Edmunds said.