Neil Ferguson says there was more Covid seeding from abroad than was thought at the time:"We frankly underestimated how far into the epidemic this country was."
That suggests that all the talk of UK being "further behind curve" than others, hence delaying lockdown, was wrong.
That suggests that all the talk of UK being "further behind curve" than others, hence delaying lockdown, was wrong.
Ferguson on care homes: "we were all working on the assumption, which was govt policy at the time, the care homes would be shielded from infection. What we've actually seen is infection in care homes four times higher than in general population."
Ferguson says that because we now know that Italian and Spanish outbreaks had taken hold earlier than thought "roughly 90% of the UK [seeding] cases were missed by our border measures because we weren't even checking people"
Ferguson says SAGE did recommend checks on people travelling from countries with active transmission, though problem arose in that Spain and Italy had outbreaks that they themselves did not properly realise at the time. Hence seeding.
Ferguson on January/February arrivals: "Had we had the testing capacity, then clearly at least testing those with symptoms coming in, would have given us a much better idea of where the infection was coming from."
Behavioural science (we hear a lot from Vallance at the time) coming into for some criticism. Prof Matt Keeling: "I'd echo Neil's comments, with hindsight we could have gone into lockdown earlier...but one of main constraints we were facing at the time was that we were told..."
"...that the population at large would resent a long lockdown."
