Sunday shows round-up: Sage scientist says lockdown delay cost lives

Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who has been advising the government throughout the Covid crisis, spoke to Andrew Marr this morning. Edmunds told Marr that, with the UK’s official death toll having now passed 40,000, the UK should have locked down faster in retrospect:

AM: [Do] you have some regrets about some of your advice, about what you thought at the time?

JE: Yes. We should have gone into lockdown earlier. I think it would have been hard to do it… but I wish we had… I think that has cost a lot of lives unfortunately.

Matt Hancock – We made the right decisions at the right time

Marr was also joined by the Health Secretary Matt Hancock, and asked him if he agreed with Edmunds’ analysis of the situation.