Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has instructed a Covid-19 Inquiry that the lockdown might have been prevented within the UK and blamed it on a “narrowness of thinking”.

The Treasury chief was giving proof to the primary stage of the inquiry, which is trying into UK preparedness for the coronavirus pandemic, a virus that brought about the nation to be positioned below restrictions a number of occasions from March 2020. The senior Conservative politician, who was well being secretary between 2012 and 2018, mentioned workouts to organize for a future pandemic had been stuffed with “groupthink”, which he wished he had “challenged at the time”.

And he mentioned that had officers understood the position of quarantining contaminated folks, as found in East Asian nations throughout Mers, then the primary lockdown may need been “avoided”. Hunt instructed the inquiry, was that by the point a regime of testing and isolation was thought-about for Covid, the transmission price was too excessive.

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“And then it was inevitable that you were going to have to use a lockdown,” he mentioned. “Had we got on the case much earlier with that approach, we might have avoided that.”

UK “groupthink” had additionally led ministers and officers to assume “we knew this stuff best”, he mentioned, including that there was a “narrowness of thinking” when it got here to studying from Taiwan and South Korea, which had handled Mers.

“They learned those lessons and there was clearly a narrowness of thinking, of which I was part, which didn’t think hard enough about that kind of potential pandemic,” Hunt added. He additionally revealed that he was not briefed about UK authorities modelling of a non-flu based mostly epidemic regardless of it being carried out whereas he was the cupboard minister liable for well being.

He mentioned it was a “wholly mistaken assumption” for previous administrations to not put together for “other types of pandemic that might emerge”.

He mentioned research by the likes of Johns Hopkins University within the US had seen the UK as being “very good at dealing with pandemics”, however mentioned that assumption proved to be “completely wrong”.

“We hadn’t given nearly enough thought to other types of pandemic that might emerge and that was, with the benefit of hindsight, a wholly mistaken assumption,” Hunt instructed the inquiry’s lead counsel Hugo Keith KC on Wednesday (June 21).

He prompt the federal government had “too narrow a focus” throughout Exercise Cygnus, a cross-government train in 2016 to check the UK’s response to a critical influenza pandemic. The findings of Exercise Alice, modelling which additionally passed off that very same yr to evaluate the impression of the Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), weren't shared with him, he additionally revealed.

Hunt mentioned the Alice report was the “only place” the place the “importance of quarantining” was clearly laid out.

He added: “The fundamental issue was that we were — and by the way not just us, across western Europe and North America — there was a shared assumption that herd immunity was inevitably going to be the only way you could contain a virus because it spread like wildfire.”

Hunt’s proof comes after Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden instructed the inquiry he was reassured throughout his time within the Cabinet Office, from July 2019 to February 2020, that the UK was in a “pretty strong state of preparedness” for any future pandemic.

Dowden additionally instructed the investigation that preparations for a no-deal Brexit put the nation in a “strong position” to answer different challenges. The deputy premier’s proof session had adopted on from Professor Sir Mark Walport, who instructed the inquiry the UK had not been “operationally prepared” for a pandemic.

The former chief scientific adviser to the UK authorities mentioned the main target in developed nations had “moved away from infectious diseases after the Second World War”, with extra consideration on circumstances corresponding to coronary heart illness and diabetes.

It got here after Lord Bethell, a Conservative former well being minister, mentioned “making money is not a crime” as he defended the VIP lane for coronavirus-related contracts, which noticed some politically-connected corporations make big income.

The peer additionally blamed “longstanding” inequalities for the NHS not being sufficiently ready for the pandemic.

Ending the day’s proof, Hunt mentioned the legacy of the 2008 monetary disaster made it inconceivable to spice up NHS funding sooner to raised put together for the pandemic.

The Chancellor admitted feeling “concerned” in regards to the “fragility” of the NHS and Social Care programs after Exercise Cygnus, resulting in an introduced improve in funding in June 2018.