PM Johnson: ‘Open questions’ on whether lockdown was too late
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said there are “open questions” on whether lockdown measures were implemented too late in the UK, as coronavirus remained a mystery to scientists at the time.
Asked whether lockdown came too late, Johnson said: “When you listen to the scientists, the questions that you’ve just asked are actually very open questions as far as they are concerned.
“This was something that was new, that we didn’t understand in the way that we would have liked in the first few weeks and months,” he told the BBC.
“The single thing that we didn’t see at the beginning was the extent to which it was being transmitted asymptomatically from person to person.”
Johnson admitted that the government could have done things “differently” at the start of the pandemic, and spoke of “lessons to be learned”.
The latest government figures estimate more than 45,000 people in the UK have died after testing positive for coronavirus, while cases near 300,000.
Johnson has promised an independent inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic, but has yet to provide further details.
Today the government announced that 30m people in the UK will be offered a flu vaccine this year, in a bid to limit the coronavirus’ impact on the NHS this winter.
Johnson said this would be on top of government initiatives to increase testing and tracing and buy more personal protective equipment, adding: “What people really want to focus on now is what are we doing to prepare for the next phase.”