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Alex Andreou‘s forensic analysis shows how Boris Johnson’s administration underestimated the speed of the Coronavirus pandemic and have been flying blind ever since
“We have taken the right steps at the right time based on the best scientific advice”. This is the standard ministerial response to any insinuation the UK may have been slow to act during the early stages of the Coronavirus outbreak. And since we’re not allowed to see that scientific advice in any detail, the argument is circular.
The trouble is, even on the available evidence, the claim falls apart at the slightest interrogation. At each step of this process, the Government’s timing appears to have been anything but right.
Rewatching those early COVID-19 briefings in late-February to early-March, one is instantly hit by a palpable sense of exceptionalism. The rhetoric was Trumpian. “We have a fantastic NHS, fantastic testing, and fantastic surveillance of the spread of the disease… Our country remains extremely well prepared,” the Prime Minister insisted on 3 March.
There was hubris, too. “I was at a hospital the other night, where I think there were actually a few Coronavirus patients, and I shook hands with everybody, you’ll be pleased to know”, boasted Johnson that day. On 12 March, when asked what steps were taken to shield him from the virus and whether any plans were in place in case he became incapacitated, he chuckled at the suggestion and replied “I’m just washing my hands.” This was two days after a minister had tested positive for COVID-19.
This Government didn’t “follow the science”. It cornered the science. Bullied it into sounding certain, on a subject with no certainty
The press briefing room was tightly packed with several dozen journalists on both occasions. The three lecterns were less than a metre from each other. A situation that persisted, incredibly, until 22 March. This did not look like a group of people who fully understood the gravity of the situation. As Johnson left the 12 March briefing, with chief medical officer Chris Witty, chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance and health secretary Matt Hancock, they were huddled closely together.
Within a fortnight, three of the four were isolating with COVID-19 symptoms. A few days after that, Boris Johnson was in intensive care.
What Happened to the “Delay Phase”?
What could explain such casual disregard? The answer is simple. They thought they had a lot more time.
There was universal agreement that timing was crucial in a pandemic setting. “The timing is critical and that is true across all of the interventions we have looked at,” Vallance said on 12 March. Talking about their plan of action and how people may lose interest if asked to sustain measures too long, Whitty added: “We do need to do it at the last point it is reasonable.”
It was also made clear that the Government was considering and had modelled most possible interventions. Johnson was explicit: “Whatever is happening in other countries, whatever measures are being urged upon us, be in no doubt we are considering absolutely all of them and, in due time, they may, of course, become necessary.”
The most urgent question, therefore, became what might the UK curve look like and where we were along it. “In terms of the things that could be done … we need to understand where we are in the epidemic,” Vallance explained on 9 March. “We’re expecting the numbers to increase, initially slowly, but really quite fast after a while and we have to catch it before the upswing begins,” Whitty added.
“The most dangerous period is not now, but some weeks away,” Johnson said in the 12 March briefing. Cheltenham Festival was at that point on its second day. The Government had still not implemented any of its suite of measures announced on 3rd March, other than hand-washing.
“You can think of it as roughly two to three months from an outbreak of sustained person-to-person transmission up to the peak and two to three months for the peak to decline again,” Vallance explained on 3 March. Asked about his working assumption nine days later, he gave specifics: “We think that the peak may be something like ten to 14 weeks away. Could be a bit longer.”
This seems a catastrophic miscalculation. Britain was, in fact, three to six weeks away from the peak. It is a matter of record that hospital admissions peaked in the first week of April and daily deaths in the third.
In the Shade of the Sombrero
It is, of course, entirely reasonable to say that it was the measures that altered the timing of the peak. But the Government’s intervention only affected the decline of the numbers. What matters here is the beginning of the peak, the point at which the curve enters that much faster ascent, described by Vallance and Whitty as “the upswing” or “the inflection”.
“If implemented in combination as modelled, this set of measures is understood to most effectively delay and modify the epidemic peak, and reduce mortality,” the SAGE meeting minutes of 5 March state.
The Government’s action plan explicitly aimed to “delay the peak” and “stretch the peak”, according to Johnson. He was echoed by both scientists. Whitty explained how they aimed to “push the peak to late spring, early summer”. Vallance asserted that one of the reasons the delay phase was important was because “it pushes [the peak] out into summer months when the NHS is less busy”. On 9 March, Johnson was still hopeful their actions would “delay the peak of the spread to the summer”. He was echoed by Vallance.
This notion persisted, until at least the 16 March briefing. “Our objective is to delay and flatten the peak” the Prime Minister emphasised in his opening remarks. Talking about London, Vallance explained very clearly that by implementing measures just as you’re “reaching that inflection point” you might be able to aim measures “to completely suppress [the curve] and therefore the peak goes much further out.” He even ventured that they were implementing measures “a little bit earlier than other countries”, given where he thought we were. It is clear, in retrospect, that we were tragically late.
This is the slide that accompanied those early March briefings. It resulted in Johnson’s glib “squashing the