Britain could have been spared from ‘long, hard’ Covid lockdowns if officials had put in place short-circuit breakers, the government’s top scientist claimed today.
Dame Angela McLean, who succeeded Sir Patrick Vallance as No 10’s chief scientific adviser this year, said the measure would not have been so ‘damaging’.
Circuit breakers – a tight set of restrictions imposed for a set period – would also have avoided creating a “panic-like situation”, she told the Covid Inquiry.
Her comments echo claims by other influential scientists, who have criticized the government for being too slow to implement measures to help slow the spread of infections in the fall of 2020.
Dame Angela also told the inquiry that officials held “halfway reviews” in April 2020 – “as if we were halfway through the pandemic,” which was “definitely” not the case.
Dame Angela McLean, who succeeded Sir Patrick Vallance as No 10’s chief scientific adviser this year, said the measure would not have been so ‘damaging’. Circuit breakers – a tight set of restrictions imposed for a set period – would also have prevented a “panic-like situation” from developing, she told the Covid Inquiry.
Her comments echo claims by other influential scientists, who have criticized the government for being too slow to implement measures to help slow the spread of infections in the fall of 2020. Instead, after cases soared, officials were forced to throw England into a month-long lockdown. in November 2020. In October, circuit breaker restrictions were imposed in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
Dame Angela, chief scientist at the Ministry of Defense (MoD), told the inquiry that discussions in September 2020 focused on expectations that cases would increase due to seasonal factors.
Keeping the number of infections down will prevent a “panic-like situation where everything is running away from us,” she said.
In response to questions from Joanne Cecil, counsel to the inquiry, she added: ‘this (a circuit breaker) is when we had to do it’.
‘Interventions that keep an epidemic at bay are not as bad and not as harmful as the interventions you have to impose if you really want to reduce cases quickly.’
She later added: ‘There were plenty of good reasons why periodic short lockdowns could very well have worked better than the long, hard lockdowns we had to live with because we left them until the last possible moment.’
Dame Angela, who served on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) during the pandemic, said the failure of officials to impose a circuit breaker in September 2020 was a “mistake” and left her “very concerned”.
Instead, after cases soared, officials were forced to throw England into a month-long lockdown in November 2020. In October, circuit breaker restrictions were imposed in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
She said: ‘If we had acted decisively we would have learned from March, but we didn’t.’
She added: “That was the moment to act. We kept saying that. We kept thinking about why we didn’t explain clearly enough what we had to do.’
The advice was initially given to the government at a meeting on September 20, she said. But then Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not respond with ‘anything’.
At a meeting the next day, scientists again recommended a package of interventions to help slow the spread of the virus, while another Sage meeting on September 24 recommended another two-week circuit breaker.
Last month, the research was shown of WhatsApp exchanges between epidemiologist Professor John Edmunds and Dame Angela, sent during the September 20, 2020 meeting, with then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak ‘Dr. Death’ was mentioned and another scientist was labeled a ‘bastard’.
Email exchanges between Sir Patrick and Dame Angela, shown to the inquiry today, show that the meeting, which was also attended by Mr Sunak, Mr Johnson and Sir Patrick, was held so that Mr Johnson had ‘all sides’ could hear from a ‘balanced group’. .
This included Oxford University professors Sunetra Gupta and Carl Heneghan, of the ‘let it rip variety’, Sir Patrick wrote at the time, referring to those opposed to the imposition of lockdowns.
Professor Edmunds told the inquiry in October that Dame Angela’s comment ‘Dr. Death the Chancellor ” could very well be ” about the Eat Out To Help Out scheme, which offered a 50 percent discount on food and non-alcoholic beverages to customers dining indoors at participating restaurants.
Dame Angela also referred to a ‘f***wit’ in her messages, which Professor Edmunds deduced referred to Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford.
Email exchanges between Sir Patrick and Dame Angela, shown to the inquiry today, show that the meeting, which was also attended by Mr Sunak, Mr Johnson and Sir Patrick, was held so that Mr Johnson had ‘all sides’ could hear from a ‘balanced group’. . This included Oxford University professors Sunetra Gupta and Carl Heneghan, of the ‘let it rip variety’, Sir Patrick wrote at the time, referring to those opposed to the imposition of lockdowns.
The investigation showed WhatsApp exchanges last month between Professor Edmunds and Dame Angela during the September 20 meeting, in which she referred to “Dr. Death the Chancellor’.
In further revelations today, she also admitted that the government held ‘halfway reviews’ in April 2020, under the assumption that the nation was halfway through the pandemic.
She said, “We certainly weren’t halfway through yet.”
In her witness statement, read out at the inquest, she wrote: ‘I don’t know what people in government understand by the characteristics of Covid-19, but we were concerned that for some reason the decision makers had not taken the characteristics into account of Covid-19. no matter how serious it was.
‘I remember an early Defense meeting where I said this would take at least 18 months, which was met with disbelief.
“In April 2020, there were ‘halfway through’ reviews as if we were halfway through the pandemic.”
Addressing the investigation, she said the Treasury also failed to detect “serious errors” in the data during the pandemic.
She described how academics created a simple “toy model” to train policymakers “on how infectious disease systems work.”
But the Finance Ministry has changed the model, she claimed.
In an email exchange shown today, Dame Angela wrote: ‘Given their inability to detect glaring errors in other things they have received, I have no confidence whatsoever in their ability to hack a simple, sensible model.’
There were also times when she had to “plug the cracks” when difficulties arose between academics and civil servants, she told the inquiry.
When asked if the differences in approach caused problems during the pandemic, she said: “There have been several times where I’ve had to patch up the cracks, I would say.
‘It was mainly because an academic from SPI-MO had told an official why he was wrong, in a way that the official thought was rude.’
But she added that it was her job and that she “really enjoyed doing it.”
She said: ‘I had contact with people saying, ‘I’m sorry, that was upsetting for you. They didn’t mean to be rude to you in person. They were talking about your work.’
The country’s first lockdown in March 2020 also came too late, she argued.
Asked if the lockdown announcement was timely, she said: “You have already heard from colleagues that it was too late.
“So if we’re doing a ‘with the benefit of hindsight’ exercise here, I would say it should have been two weeks earlier, that would have really made a huge difference.
‘Now we didn’t have the data two weeks earlier.
‘On the 16th we had enough data, in my opinion we should have gone into lockdown on Monday the 16th.
“On the 16th – given what we knew about how quickly this epidemic was spreading, given what we knew and could surmise about the fact that probably everyone was susceptible to contracting the disease – I think there was enough information on that date to to say we stop all non-essential contact.’
