UK did ‘not have the flexibility to scale up’ and tackle Covid, Chris Whitty says

Professor Sir Chris Whitty instructed the UK Covid-19 Inquiry “multiple capabilities that can be flexed to almost any emergency” have been wanted, relatively than a plan for one state of affairs.

He instructed households who misplaced family members throughout Covid he “saw the extraordinary impact and devastation” whereas on NHS wards for 12 weeks.

And he mentioned ramping up procedures was a problem “we really absolutely should have taken much more seriously”. He added: “We had a very good capacity to do a very small amount of diagnoses really quickly and we did not have the ability to scale up.”

Sir Chris was backed by ex-UK chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance.

He instructed the West London listening to: “We do not have a diagnostics industry of any scale in the UK, which made scaling up with diagnostics much more difficult.”

Sir Chris additionally mentioned that not sufficient thought was given to how a pandemic like Covid could possibly be stopped in its tracks. But he added: “I do think, on the other hand, it is sensible to have a plan for, ‘If everything fails, what are we going to do?’.

“We do still need to be able to say, ‘Let’s go to the top of the range, actually, we could end up with 750,000 people dying, where are we going to bury bodies?’.”

Referring to earlier proof by ex-Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and former authorities coverage minister Sir Oliver Letwin, Sir Chris mentioned: “All of them essentially said we saw this huge problem and we didn’t say to the system, ‘How are we going to stop it?’.”

He mentioned though social measures like quarantine, particular person isolation and shutting faculties weren’t new, lockdown was “the very big new idea” and a “very radical thing to do”.

It would have been “very surprising, without this being requested by a senior politician or similar” that scientists would have deliberate lockdowns with their “huge economic and social impact ramifications” prematurely.

Sir Chris was requested in regards to the truth there appeared to have been no in depth discussions about points corresponding to pace of transmission or asymptomatic an infection in authorities paperwork earlier than Covid.

He mentioned: “I think this illustrates a failure in the way we generally operate in government to deal with emergencies, which is to say, ‘We need to have a plan for every eventuality and if you can just pull off the plan and you can tick off all the things you want to do, that’s going to work’.

“Actually what nature is going to give you…the hazards and threats…is going to be completely different every time.”