Britain should have gone into lockdown earlier and failing to impose restrictions sooner ‘cost a lot of lives’, says Government science expert

• Professor John Edmunds is an infectious diseases expert who attends SAGE
• He said today he believed that Britain ‘should have gone into lockdown earlier’
• He warned crisis is ‘definitely not over’ and there is still ‘an awful long way to go’
• Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19

Britain should have gone into lockdown earlier and failing to impose restrictions sooner ‘cost a lot of lives’, one of the Government’s top science experts said today. 

Professor John Edmunds, who attends meetings of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), said he regretted that ministers had not acted quicker to impose draconian curbs on the nation. 

He also warned the coronavirus crisis is ‘definitely not over’ and that there is still ‘an awful long way to go’ before the disease is defeated. 

He said the nation could not yet ‘relax’ and if people do then the ‘epidemic will come back very fast’. 

Professor John Edmunds, a Government science adviser who attends SAGE, today said he ‘wished’ lockdown had started earlier 

The UK’s official coronavirus death toll is now more than 40,000. 

Prof Edmunds, an infectious diseases expert, said more lives would have been saved if ministers had imposed lockdown before March 23. 

Asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show what he regretted about the action taken during the outbreak, he said: ‘We should have gone into lockdown earlier. 

‘I think it would have been hard to do it, I think the data that we were dealing with in the early part of March and our kind of situational awareness was really quite poor.

‘And so I think it would have been very hard to pull the trigger at that point but I wish we had – I wish we had gone into lockdown earlier. I think that has cost a lot of lives unfortunately.’

Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the same programme that he disagreed with Prof Edmund’s view on the timing of lockdown. 

‘I think we took the right decisions at the right time and there’s a broad range on SAGE of scientific opinion and we were guided by the science which means guided by the balance of that opinion – as expressed to ministers through the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser,’ he said.

The Government is now in the process of easing lockdown rules as the number of new cases in the UK continues to fall. 

But Prof Edmunds struck a cautious tone as he said he would prefer to see a further reduction in infection rates before restrictions are loosened. 

He said ultimately the timing of the easing of lockdown is up to the Government, but he added: ‘I would still prefer to see the cases come down lower than they are at the moment.

‘The ONS survey suggests that we are having around 5,000 new infections everyday and that is just in the community and just in England, excluding Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, that is excluding all of the infections occurring in hospitals and care homes which are very significant numbers still.

‘So I would like to see the cases come further down. That is my own personal opinion. But the Government has to weigh these things up, of course they do.’ 

Prof Edmunds said despite the epidemic heading in the right direction the UK would be wrong to assume that the battle has been won. 

He said: ‘It is definitely not all over, unfortunately. There is an awful long way to go.

‘If we relax then this epidemic will come back very fast so I think we do need to be really cautious.

‘I actually think that people have been amazingly cautious and amazingly tolerant and adhering to the guidance as much as possible, I really do.

‘I think that people are still being very cautious and thankfully they are.’     

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