Chances missed, time wasted and opportunities lost? Experts on how Britain squandered critical days as storm gathered

Leading scientist laments the ‘embarrassing’ response of UK

One of Scotland’s leading scientists believes Britain was far too slow to react after coronavirus hit Europe, losing vital time to prepare for the onslaught ahead.

Professor Dame Anne Glover spoke out amid mounting criticism of how the UK responded to the threat of Covid- 19, after the country’s death toll became the highest in Europe last week.

The molecular biologist, a former chief scientific adviser to the European Commission, said the UK Government failed to act quickly enough to contain and then prevent the spread of the disease and, s p e c i f i c a l l y, failed to take the opportunity to build a strategy for testing and contact tracing.

Other expert observers have pointed to a critical period in the middle of March when the Prime Minister suspended efforts to contain the spread of Covid19 through testing before being forced to impose a full lockdown 11 days later.

The Scottish Government was involved in the decision- making as part of a four- nation approach to the crisis and has adopted the same policies as Westminster.

Professor Glover, president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s national academy of science, said: “It is almost an embarrassment to look and see how badly we have done in the UK,

Anne Glover and it’s not because people were lazy or uncaring.

“It is because the UK Government was very badly prepared. The main focus in the UK was probably understanding that our NHS and other social services had been steadily undermined over the past decade with little investment.

“It was quickly realised our health service would probably be unable to cope with a very small number of intensive care unit beds per head of population.

“There will be inquiries into what we did and how we reacted in the UK, but you only have to look at the current figures to see how badly we have done on initial testing.

“Although we’ve tried to ramp that up, it’s still nowhere near what we need to effectively test all those who need testing and then follow that up with tracing and the isolating.

“It’s a very clear mantra of what to do when you’re faced with an unknown infectious disease. You need to test, you need to trace and you need to isolate. And we were too slow. Just way too slow.”

Prof Glover also criticised the UK Government for attempting to hide the identities of members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies ( SAGE) and delay publication of its advice that has shaped the country’s response to coronavirus.

She said: “I think the public deserves to know the membership of the group, but it also means much wider voices who are familiar with the science and have potentially valuable information or commentary can feed it in to the people who are making recommendations to government.”

The academic is now leading an influential Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Futures Commission

Continued on Page 8