Chief medical officer defends handling of testing programme

ENGLAND’S CHIEF medical officer has launched a staunch defence of his actions over the Covid-19 pandemic, saying mass testing had to be abandoned due to capacity issues and the lockdown came at about the right time.

In a heated exchange with former Health Secretary and the chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee Jeremy Hunt, Professor Chris Whitty told MPs that widespread community testing earlier on in the pandemic required “an infrastructure we did not have”.

Asked by Mr Hunt why he had not advised that testing be ramped up quickly in January or February, as had been done in “four weeks” recently, Prof Whitty said: “I respectfully differ. You are going to say I suspect at some point ... why is test, trace and isolate not brilliant now?

“This is after we’ve had huge investment and many months of preparation. The idea that you can suddenly switch this on, I’m afraid, is incorrect.

“The way you run emergencies badly is to try and run them based on a theory of what you could do rather than with the tools you have at your disposal. That is the way we had to run it and that is the way we did run it.”

Prof Whitty told Mr Hunt that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) had consistently said that more testing capacity was needed.

But he agreed that, given the capacity, it was the correct advice to stop widespread community testing on March 12.

Prof Whitty also said that Ministers followed scientific advice with a “delay that was no more than you would reasonably expect”.

Asked by Mr Hunt if he was “content” that the Government followed his advice on staging different elements of the lockdown,

Prof Whitty said: “Ministers at the time, who were put in an incredibly difficult position, in my view, followed the advice given by Sage, which is clearly signposted through the minutes of Sage, with a delay that was no more than you would reasonably expect for what are really very difficult things to operationalise and decide.”

Last month, Professor John Edmunds, a member of Sage, said the UK should have gone into lockdown earlier and that not doing so had cost “a lot of lives”.

Earlier in the committee hearing, Professor Sir John Bell, of the University of Oxford, told MPs it is unlikely Covid-19 will be eliminated.

“The reality is that this pathogen is here forever, it isn’t going anywhere,” he said.

“Look at how much trouble they’ve had in eliminating, for example, polio, that eradication programme has been going on for 15 years and they’re still not there.

“So this is going to come and go, and we’re going to get winters where we get a lot of this virus back in action.”

The Wellcome Trust’s director and Sage member Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar said the world will be living with Covid-19 for “decades to come”.

The idea you can suddenly switch this on, I’m afraid, is incorrect.

Chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty.