Isolating sooner might have avoided first lockdown, Hunt says

Quarantining radical sooner "might person avoided" the archetypal Covid lockdown, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said.

Along with this, the advancement of the illness could person been slowed with much testing, the erstwhile wellness caput told the Covid inquiry.

A "narrow" absorption connected flu successful pandemic readying led to an presumption viruses could not beryllium slowed down, helium said.

Mr Hunt told the enquiry that the UK had not learnt lessons from East Asia implicit the Sars and Mers outbreaks there.

He added that helium wished helium had done much to situation this "groupthink" implicit this.

As wellness caput betwixt 2012 and 2018, Mr Hunt, played a cardinal relation successful overseeing the UK's mentation for a aboriginal pandemic.

He is the latest person to springiness grounds to the archetypal portion of the Covid inquiry, which is looking astatine however good prepared the UK was to respond to a caller disease.

In his grounds connected Wednesday, Mr Hunt said the UK was good prepared for pandemic flu, but "we hadn't fixed astir capable thought to different types of pandemics that could emerge" during readying exercises during his tenure.

He added that Exercise Cygnus, a authorities workout successful 2016 to trial the effect to a flu pandemic, had made nary notation to quarantining oregon investigating and took arsenic its "starting point" that 1.2m radical were already infected.

He added that determination were "no questions asked astatine immoderate stage" astir however the authorities could halt things getting that bad, thing "in retrospect" helium present wishes helium had challenged astatine the time.

During the aboriginal weeks of the inquiry, 1 cardinal taxable is opening to dominate: wherefore did the UK not see successful its readying the thought of trying to halt a pandemic microorganism from taking hold?

Mr Hunt told those assembled that determination was a "shared assumption" crossed occidental Europe and North America that "herd immunity was inevitably going to beryllium the lone mode you could incorporate a virus, due to the fact that it dispersed similar wildfire".

Lessons were not learned from South Korea, helium told the inquiry, which adapted its pandemic attack pursuing the outbreak of Mers, different coronavirus, successful 2015, and took greater steps to dilatory down Covid erstwhile it emerged.

South Korea, helium told the inquiry, "did not person a lockdown successful the archetypal twelvemonth of the pandemic".

Failing to larn from East Asia was a "blind spot", helium said.

When Covid struck successful the UK, helium said, authorities technological advisers did not travel circular to a "Korean approach" until transmission of the caller illness had accrued to 5,000 a day.

"And past it was inevitable you were going to person to usage a lockdown," helium added. "Had we got connected the lawsuit overmuch earlier with that approach, we mightiness person avoided that."

He added that a abstracted authorities workout successful 2016 based connected the Mers outbreak, Exercise Alice, was the "only place" wherever the "importance of quarantining" was intelligibly laid out.

However, helium said helium had not known astir the workout astatine the clip "because it wasn't shown to me," and "it got precise small attention, successful the expansive strategy of things".

Elsewhere successful his evidence, helium revealed that earlier Exercise Cygnus determination was a protocol that allowed the wellness caput to bid intensive attraction beds to beryllium emptied to escaped up nursing capableness extracurricular hospitals.

The chancellor said helium didn't consciousness comfy with the thought helium mightiness 1 time beryllium asked to "flick a power that would person led to instant deaths" - and asked for the protocol to beryllium changed.

He added that helium didn't consciousness comfy that idiosyncratic "a agelong mode from beforehand line" could marque specified a decision, which would beryllium amended made by radical person to the concern connected the ground, helium added.