LONDON (BLOOOMBERG) – The UK did not realise how widespread coronavirus was across the country early in 2020 due to “very limited testing capacity” which must be improved to tackle future pandemics, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s senior health adviser said.

Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, said incomplete data was used to make key decisions such as when the first lockdown should be imposed and whether people travelling from outside the country should be quarantined.

The UK “didn’t realise quite how far along the curve we were” because it was using the number of deaths and people in intensive care to track the extent of Covid-19 – events that happen a number of weeks after the infection is first contracted, Whitty told a panel of lawmakers on Wednesday (Dec 9).

Whitty was answering questions alongside Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance about the lessons to be learned from the pandemic. Johnson’s government has faced criticism over its handling of the crisis, with Britain’s death toll now topping 62,000 – one of the highest in the world.

Despite the approval of a vaccine, which is being rolled out this week, a resurgence of cases this winter threatens to overwhelm a health system that has been under increasing strain for years.

Whitty said the lack of testing was “one of the biggest barriers” to making rational decisions early on. “We’ve really, really got to build our capacity,” he said.

“We really need to think seriously about scaling up testing for future crises.” Vallance said contact tracing also needs to be improved because it “required people in place, trained and ready” – just as the outbreak of Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003 had shown.

The underlying scientific understanding of Covid-19 changed over time, the advisers said, which was why Britain initially told people not to wear face coverings, which are now mandatory in indoor venues and on public transport.

Jenny Harries, deputy chief medical officer, said increased understanding of aerosol transmission meant the advice on face coverings changed.

Whitty said scientists also failed to properly understand the impact of asymptomatic transmission of coronavirus early on, saying they had drawn “comfort, wrongly, from Sars,” where most transmission was symptomatic. “That was an error of understanding,” he said.

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