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Coronavirus: Acting earlier would have saved lives, says Sage member
May 21, 2020
One of the government's scientific advisers has said he would have liked ministers to have acted "a week or two weeks earlier" in the virus pandemic.
Sir Ian Boyd, who sits on the Sage scientific advisory group, said "it would have made quite a big difference" to the death rate.
Ministers have always insisted they have been guided by the scientific advice during the pandemic.
Government figures show 36,042 people with the virus have died in the UK.
Sir Ian is a professor of biology at St Andrews University and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which advises ministers on Covid-19.
He started attending Sage meetings a month ago.
'Slower off the mark'
He told The Coronavirus Newscast: "Acting very early was really important and I would have loved to have seen us acting a week or two weeks earlier and it would have made quite a big difference to the steepness of the curve of infection and therefore the death rate.
"And I think that's really the number one issue - could we have acted earlier? Were the signs there earlier on?"
Sir Ian suggested that the government based its initial assessment on the transmissibility of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) virus, which is less infectious than this coronavirus.
Sars was a previously unknown disease that started to spread around the world in 2003. It went on to infect more than 8,000 people and kill almost 800.
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