Virus expert resigns over tryst during lockdown
Married lover went to his home during lockdown
• The British scientist whose advice prompted Prime Minister Boris Johnson to lock down the country resigned from his government advisory position Tuesday night, as The Daily Telegraph can disclose that he broke social distancing rules to meet his married lover.
Prof. Neil Ferguson allowed the woman to visit him at home during lockdown while he lectured the public on the need for strict social distancing to reduce the spread of coronavirus. The woman lives with her husband and their two children in another house.
The epidemiologist leads a team at Imperial College London that produced the computer-modelled research which claimed more than 500,000 people in Britain would die without the national lockdown. He has frequently taken to the media to support lockdown and praised the “very intensive social distancing” measures.
Ferguson’s resignation comes as the United Kingdom’s death toll passed 32,375, making it the highest recorded death count from coronavirus in Europe.
The disclosure of the “illegal” meetings will infuriate couples living apart whom the government has banned from meeting up during the lockdown, now in its seventh week.
On at least two occasions, Antonia Staats, 38, travelled from her south London home across the capital to spend time with the 51-yearold scientist, nicknamed Professor Lockdown, who had only just completed two weeks self-isolating after testing positive for the virus.
Ferguson told The Daily Telegraph: “I accept I made an error of judgment. I have therefore stepped back from my involvement in Sage (the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies). I acted in the belief that I was immune, having tested positive for coronavirus, and completely isolated myself for almost two weeks after developing symptoms.
“I deeply regret any undermining of the clear messages around the continued need for social distancing to control this devastating epidemic. The government guidance is unequivocal, and is there to protect all of us.”
The first of Staats’s visits, on March 30, coincided with a public warning by Ferguson that the week-old lockdown measures would have to remain until June.
Staats, a left-wing campaigner, made a second visit on April 8 despite telling friends she suspected her husband, an academic in his 30s, had COVID-19 symptoms. The couple and their children live in a $3.3 million home, and are understood to be in an open marriage. She has told friends about her relationship with Ferguson, but does not believe their actions in meeting to be hypocritical as she considers the households to be one.
Staats declined to comment.
A week before the first meeting, Dr. Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, and Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, clarified during the daily Downing Street press conference that couples not living together must stay apart during lockdown.
Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, recently reminded the public it was “illegal to be outside the home for one of any other than four reasons”. They are medical emergency, daily exercise, essential food shopping and for certain types of work.
The police in England and Wales have handed out more than 9,000 fines during the lockdown — equivalent to one every five minutes.
The latest U.K. data, released Tuesday, confirmed that the total death toll in England and Wales was 29,710.
When taking into account the number of deaths in Scotland and Northern Ireland — which operate their own devolved versions of the Office for National Statistics — there were 32,375 deaths involving coronavirus by April 24 in the U.K.
I DEEPLY REGRET ANY UNDERMINING OF THE CLEAR MESSAGES AROUND THE CONTINUED NEED FOR SOCIAL DISTANCING.
This makes the country’s official death toll the worst in Europe, overtaking the 25,969 coronavirus deaths in Italy, 22,524 in Spain and 22,214 in France recorded by Johns Hopkins University up to April 24.
Prof. Dame Angela McLean admitted that the numbers of deaths in the U.K. “is higher than we would wish”, while Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary, resisted suggestions that the U.K. is now Europe’s hardest hit nation.
“I don’t think we will get a verdict of how well countries have done until the pandemic is over,” Raab said, stressing that there are “different ways of counting deaths”.
“We now publish data that includes all deaths in all settings and not all countries do that, so I am not sure the international comparison works unless you reliably know that all countries are measuring in the same way,” he said.
“It also depends, quite frankly, how good countries are at gathering their statistics.”
More than 194,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the U.K.