Much of the media headlines from the Covid Inquiry have centred on what happened from March 2020 onwards. In doing so they have arguably overlooked the crucial period before this…
“The lesson from every epidemic is that if you wait until you know everything, then you are too late. If you fall behind an epidemic curve, it is extraordinarily hard to get back in front of it. That go-slow outlook pervaded much of the thinking in January and February 2020 in the UK, even though all the information that had accumulated by the end of January should have set off the loudest of sirens.”.
‘Spike: The Virus vs. The People – the Inside Story’ by Jeremy Farrar (an infectious disease specialist who sat on the government’s Sage advisory committee). He’s now Chief Scientist at the WHO.
Richard Horton (Editor in chief of The Lancet). “We knew in the last week of January that this was coming. We could have acted. We had time when we could have ramped up testing, time when we could have got personal protective equipment ready and disseminated. We didn’t do it.”
Anthony Costello, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Inclusion Health Research, in giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry on Day 10 (Module 2), argued that if the UK had followed the same policy as South Korea, which was to suppress the virus as quickly as possible (something he thought we were capable of doing), we could have prevented up to 150,000 deaths. It’s worth reading his witness statement to understand why he said this.
Sir David King, Chief Scientist from 2000 to 2007, has expressed a similar view.
Here’s a timeline of events up to the beginning of March 2020 (largely taken from ‘Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus’ . by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott).
7 January 2020
Johnson first discussed the virus with health secretary – two days after he returned from his holiday in the Caribbean.
16 January
Devi Sridhar (Professor of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University) was on Twitter calling for swift action to prepare for the virus.
22 January – First Sage meeting to discuss virus
Ferguson warned that the Chinese outbreak was far larger than shown in official figures and that 3,300 people a day were flying out of Wuhan, making the spread of the disease highly likely.
24 January – First Cobra meeting on Covid .. (Johnson absent)
Johnson was hosting a Downing Street reception for the Chinese ambassador Liu Xiaoming, as part of the celebrations for the country’s Lunar New Year – which doubled as an opportunity to discuss a post-Brexit trade deal.
25 January
Professor Mark Woolhouse had a meeting with Neil Ferguson and Jeremy Farrah to discuss his concerns about Covid. (He had previously consulted with Jeremy Farrah on 21 January before emailing Scotland’s CMO later that day).
In his evidence on Day 10 (Module 2) he said he thought that testing preparations were totally inadequate, that he was “very, very concerned” and found the worse case scenarios very frightening. He thought there was a lack of urgency and that February was a lost month.
29 January – Second Cobra meeting .. (Johnson absent)
Johnson was certainly in Westminster
30 January – Threat level increased from ‘low’ to ‘moderate’
Scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine had confirmed that the virus’s infectivity could be as bad as Ferguson’s worst estimate several days earlier, which indicated a reproductive rate of 3.5.
3 February – Johnson’s ‘Clark Kent’ speech
Johnson gave a speech in Greenwich (which became known as his ‘Cark Kent’ speech)
5 February – Third Cobra meeting .. (Johnson absent)
Johnson was in Westminster holding meetings with ministers and sparring with Jeremy Corbyn.
14 – 24 February (?) – Johnson was at Chevening
Two more Cobra meetings missed, although it’s only a one-hour drive from Whitehall.
He was still married to Marina Wheeler, the mother of four of his children, but had secretly become engaged to Symonds at the end of the previous year, possibly in Mustique. One of his tasks in Chevening was to finalise the terms of his separation from Wheeler, and midway through his holiday it was announced in the High Court that the couple had reached a settlement, leaving Wheeler free to apply for a divorce to end 27 years of marriage. But there was another tricky problem to navigate. Symonds had been carrying their child for more than six months and people were beginning to notice. The news would have to be made known soon, which meant that Johnson would have to prepare his family for the announcement.
It is alleged that he also had wanted time out to work on a biography of Shakespeare that he had been commissioned to write before he became prime minister and for which he had been paid an advance.
18 February – Fourth Cobra meeting .. (Johnson absent)
Johnson calls China president Xi Jinping who thanked him for the PPE†. A No 10 spokesman said they had “agreed on the importance of the UK-China relationship and resolved to work together across a range of issues including strengthening the economic partnership”. Independent
† In early to mid-February the government shipped 279,000 items of its depleted stockpile of PPE to China.
29 February – Johnson announces his engagement to Carrie Symonds
2 March – First Cobra meeting on Covid that Johnson attended
12 days after the last meeting during which the number of infections in the UK had soared from 420 to 11,000, according to the Oxford and Imperial College estimates.
3 March
Johnson told the assembled journalists that the virus was “overwhelmingly a disease that is moderate in its effects” and the country was “going to get through coronavirus, no doubt at all, and get through it in good shape”.
.In early March, Britain’s leader said he had shaken the hands of everyone at a hospital where infected patients were being treated. Mirror.
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UK Covid Inquiry, Module 2, Day 10: 16 Oct
[0:00] . Prof Mark Woolhouse . . (WS) – Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology
[1:52, 2:53] . Prof Anthony Costello . . (WS) – Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Inclusion Health Research
WS – Witness statement
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Boris Johnson
… gave evidence to the Inquiry on 6th & 7th December (Module 2 – Day 31 & Day 32)
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Peterborough Fabian Society 