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MATT HANCOCK shrugged off the government’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic today by insisting it had made the “right decisions at the right time” about implementing lockdown.
Despite a growing chorus of condemnation from scientists and health chiefs, the Health Secretary defended the government’s record even as the death toll continued to increase daily.
The latest critic was infectious diseases expert Professor John Edmunds, who suggested that Britain should have imposed restrictions in early March.
Prof Edmunds, who attends the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said: “I think it would have been very hard to pull the trigger at that point [in March] but I wish we had — I wish we had gone into lockdown earlier.
“I think that has cost a lot of lives, unfortunately.”
When asked if he agreed with the professor’s comments, Mr Hancock said there was a broad range of Sage scientific opinion, and that the government was “guided by the science,” which resulted, he claimed, from “the balance of that opinion.”
