London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 02, 2025

Boris Johnson says it’s ‘too early to judge’ if lockdown was too late

Boris Johnson says it’s ‘too early to judge’ if lockdown was too late

The prime minister has said the timing of lockdown ‘will need to be examined in the fullness of time’,
He was pressed on the issue after Professor Neil Ferguson said that the UK’s death toll could have been halved if the country locked down a week earlier.

Boris Johnson told the daily press briefing: ‘I have nothing to add to the views of the members of Sage.

‘I think that all such judgments will need to be examined in the fullness of time.

‘A lot of the questions this evening have been about what we got wrong in the past, what do we say about what we may have got wrong.

‘All I can say is that it’s too early to judge ourselves, we simply don’t know the answer to a lot of these questions but we know a lot more now than we did in January, February, or even March. One thing we do know about tackling coronavirus is that you have to proceed with caution.’

Chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance added: ‘The general point is should we go back and look carefully at the phasing of the measures, the different groups of measures, which one made the biggest impact and can we see in retrospect which ones are most import, that’s going to be important in judging the future should this happen again in the winter.

‘There’s time to go back and do all of that analysis and we absolutely should go back and look.’

Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, has told the Science and Technology Committee: ‘The epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced.

‘So, had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half.’

However, he added that based on what was known about transmission and fatalities at the time, the measures were warranted.

Mr Ferguson said that a paper in Nature today highlights that just before lockdown happened, the first two weeks of March, there were 1,500 to 2,000 infections imported from Italy and Spain ‘which we just hadn’t seen in the surveillance data until that point’.

He added: ‘There was much heavier seeding than we expected.

‘We frankly had underestimated how far into the epidemic this country was. That’s part of the reason [for excess UK deaths].’
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×