Whitty: We weren't ready to scale up and take on Covid

THE UK did not have the ability to "scale up" quickly to tackle the Covid outbreak, England's chief medical officer said yesterday.

- Jane Kirby

Professor Sir Chris Whitty told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry "multiple capabilities that can be flexed to almost any emergency" were needed, rather than a plan for one scenario.

He told families who lost loved ones during Covid he "saw the extraordinary impact and devastation" while on NHS wards for 12 weeks.

And he said ramping up procedures was an issue "we really absolutely should have taken much more seriously". He added: "We had a very good capacity to do a very small amount of diagnoses really quickly and we did not have the ability to scale up."

Sir Chris was backed by ex-UK chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance.