‘UK was poorly prepared for Covid-19’

LONDON: Identifying Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic as two issues that defined his tenure as president of the Royal Society, Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan, who left the role after five years on Monday, said the UK was “poorly prepared” to deal with the pandemic.

Ramakrishnan, who won the Nobel for chemistry in 2009, was the first Indian-origin scientist elected president of the society in 2015.

The society is a fellowship of many of the world’s most eminent scientists and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, with origins in the seventeenth century. The new president is statistician Adrian Smith.

Delivering the anniversary day address 2020, Ramakrishnan, 68, dwelt on various issues, focusing on the impact of Brexit on science and the ways in which the UK government dealt with the pandemic.

He said, “It is not surprising that in this rapidly evolving situation, there were missteps and mistakes. Despite a pandemic being the number one item on the national risk register, we were poorly prepared. We did not take the virus seriously enough, early enough.”

“We did not have the PPE needed; we were slow to go into lockdown; we spread infection from our hospitals to our care homes; we did not have the procedures in place to stem infections in hospitals; our understanding of who was being impacted the most was hindered by a failure to gather and understand data – that left some groups more exposed,” he added.

Ramakrishnan is also member of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies that is key to decisions on dealing with the pandemic.