The Government was slow to act over Covid

The authorities in Wuhan did not respond well, which was hardly surprising given that no one had experience of that virus and could not know what to expect.

Inevitably perhaps, they hoped that it would not be serious and would go away. A month later the central Chinese government decide that it wasn’t going away and acted decisively and effectively. Despite the Spring Festival celebrations, travel was curtailed, face masks became normal, temperature checking took place at airports and door to door tracking of contacts started. Within a week, ‘stay home’ was the rule and was respected.

500 miles from Wuhan in Zeijiang Province where our son’s family live there have been about 1,200 covid cases and one death. Zeijiang has a population about the size of England.

In the UK, pandemic influenza has been No.1 on the Government’s National Risk Register for years. In 2016 a Government exercise clearly identified weaknesses in preparedness, yet nothing was done – another efficiency saving no doubt.

We might not expect a stockpile of ventilators, just in case. But we should expect to know where to get them from, and not need to commission research from Formula 1 to ‘double up’ ventilator capacity when the design could readily be already on the table. We wouldn’t be short of protective equipment if we’d supported UK-based manufacturing properly. We wouldn’t need to spread doubts about the efficacy of face masks to give critical workers a chance to use one.

This Government knew about the epidemic in January; we were held at Heathrow on our return from Zeijiang to allow for ‘health checks’. But it was two months before it started to take things seriously – and it was a third month before talk of ‘herd immunity’ and ‘protecting the economy’ was consigned to the trash bin. It has now adopted a sensible and proportionate strategy which should work. But don’t blame the Chinese. Crisis management can be straight-forward if you don’t panic – what has to be done is usually clear and people generally then accept clear leadership. And it’s even easier if money is no object. But you have to realise that you are in a crisis first, and this Government took three months!

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