Britain must be better prepared for “further waves” of coronavirus, with MPs told the government was “too slow” to respond to the current outbreak.
Parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee was told by leading physician Professor Anthony Costello that the country must face up to the “harsh reality” that it did not react quickly enough to warnings about COVID-19.
The professor, from University College London’s Institute for Global Health, told MPs via video-link that the UK would likely end up with the highest coronavirus death rate in Europe – even greater than Spain and Italy.
In order to avoid another large spike in fatalities once the country begins to ease its lockdown measures, he said the government must up community testing capacity and embrace South Korea-style contact tracing.
“We all hope that the national lockdown and social distancing will bring about a large suppression of the epidemic; however, we are going to face further waves,” said Professor Costello.
“We need to make sure we have a system in place that can not just do a certain number of tests in the laboratory.
“We also need a system at district and community level to test people rapidly in the community, in care homes, and make sure the results get back to them very quickly.
“We need to maintain social distancing of some kind when we lift the national lockdown, by focusing on the people we really want to lockdown, which are cases and contacts.
“You need to find cases, test them if you can, trace their contacts, isolate them, do social distancing – but most importantly of all you do it all at speed.”
But Professor Costello, a former British director at the World Health Organisation, said it was likely that the most vulnerable people in the country would have to remain in some form of lockdown until there is a vaccine.
Few expect a vaccine to be available until the spring of 2021 at the earliest, and Professor Costello suggested the UK could face as many as six waves of the coronavirus before then.
“We have to get the economy going and if it means locking down 10% of our population, even giving them incentives to stay in quarantine and with digital apps to help monitor their symptoms and give them support, that’s the way to really keep this going until we get a vaccine and safe herd immunity,” he added.
Among those questioning Professor Costello was former health secretary and committee chair Jeremy Hunt.
The committee is conducting an inquiry into the preparedness of the UK to deal with such an outbreak, focusing on measures to safeguard public health, how to contain the virus, and the ability of the NHS to cope.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock gave evidence to the committee’s inquiry, which is meeting via video-link, on Friday, following chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance last month.
Attention among committee members has begun to turn towards how the UK might be able to cope with the disease once lockdown measures start being lifted, although any such changes are at least three weeks away.
Professor Costello said the high number of coronavirus-related deaths in the UK, which is close to surpassing 14,000, should serve as a grim reminder to the government that it needs to respond quicker to future outbreaks.
The physician said that while we “should not have any blame at this stage”, the government “can make sure in the second wave we’re not too slow”.
“We will probably have the highest death rate in Europe, we have to face the reality of that,” he said, adding that the nationwide total could eventually reach 40,000.
“We were too slow on a number of things, but we can make sure that in the second wave we’re not too slow.”
The government has faced criticism for being slow to act on warnings from other countries, most notably Italy.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson was initially reluctant to close social spaces like pubs and cinemas, and took longer still before ordering the nationwide lockdown last month.
Questions continue to be asked about testing capacity, especially in care homes.
Mr Hancock has said the UK wants to be carrying out 100,000 tests per day by the end of April, but the number being done each day at the moment is still hovering just below 20,000.
