Covid risks may have been overstated: Chris Whitty

Speaking at the Covid inquiry, the chief medical officer said that the advice to stay home during the pandemic led to people with heart attacks avoiding hospitals.

• EasternEye
• 30 September, 2024

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By: EasternEye

MINISTERS may have overstated the dangers of Covid-19 in public health messaging, potentially making people “incredibly afraid,” according to professor Chris Whitty.

Speaking at the Covid inquiry, the chief medical officer said that the advice to stay home during the pandemic led to people with heart attacks avoiding hospitals, reported The Times.

When asked if the UK struck the right balance in encouraging people to seek medical care while also urging them to protect the NHS, Whitty admitted the messaging was not clear enough. He said the government may have “pushed too strongly” on the risks of the virus and failed to stress that emergency care was still available.

Whitty explained that there was “reasonable evidence” that fewer people sought hospital care for heart attacks than expected. “Some of those people were staying at home,” he said, noting that many of these cases involved treatable conditions.

Addressing whether the government exaggerated the risks, Whitty noted it was important for the public to understand the gravity of the situation. He reflected on the difficult balance, acknowledging that some may argue the risks were overstated. “Arguably some people would say we, if anything, overdid it,” he said.

Whitty defended the necessity of lockdowns, describing the situation in March 2020 as “absolutely catastrophic.” He called the pandemic the “largest medical emergency since the Second World War” and noted the heavy toll on NHS staff, particularly before vaccines became available, the newspaper reported.

The inquiry also heard from professor Kevin Fong, former national clinical adviser for NHS emergency preparedness, who described the pandemic as like facing a “terrorist attack every day.”

He said the scale of death during Covid was unlike anything intensive care teams had seen before, with some hospitals reporting as many as ten deaths in a single shift.