Matt Hancock hits out at WHO for failure to plan border controls to stop pandemics

The World Health Organisation was criticised over its Covid planning and its failure to consider shutting borders as a necessary response to the pandemic.

Matt Hancock, who was UK health secretary when Covid was first detected and spread around the globe, hit out at the WHO for failing to consider shutting borders.

He told the Covid-19 public inquiry on Tuesday that more should have been done to prepare for a lockdown before coronavirus began to reach the UK in early 2020.

Six members of the Covid Families for Justice group waited outside for Mr Hancock's arrival. The group included Lorelei King, widow of Vincent Marzello, who died in March 2020 in a care home, aged 72.

Ms King, 69, described the care home facilities as “charnel houses” and called on Mr Hancock to “tell the truth” as he arrived to give evidence on Tuesday morning.

Mr Hancock said he was advised by the WHO that the UK was well placed in global rankings in pandemic preparedness.

“You can understand that when you're assured by the leading global authority that the UK is the best prepared in the world, that is quite a significant reassurance. That turned out to be wrong.”

Asked whether there was a “complete systemic failure to think about how to prevent catastrophic consequences as opposed to how to manage catastrophic consequences”, Mr Hancock said: “I couldn’t agree more and it’s an absolute tragedy.”

He said there was an associated failure to think about countermeasures such as mandatory quarantine, shielding, social restrictions and border control.

“I had to overrule the initial advice not to quarantine people being brought back from Wuhan [in China]. I mean it’s madness,” Mr Hancock said.

“And it was written into the international health regulations that you shouldn’t close borders. This was not a UK problem. It was a World Health Organisation problem.

“And the World Health Organisation, of all people, should have learnt the lessons from Mers and Sars.

“And so we had diligent, hard-working teams working on this pandemic preparedness, but there was an absolutely central doctrinal failure in the response of the UK and almost every other western country.”

He told the inquiry that pandemic preparations were too focused on “the consequences of a disaster” and not how to stop one.

The UK, he said, must be prepared to hit a “pandemic hard” and lock down if necessary to prevent the disease spreading.

He told Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, that lessons must be learnt.

“It is central to what we must learn as a country that we've got to be ready to hit a pandemic hard: that we've got to be able to take action – lockdown action if necessary, that is wider, earlier, more stringent than feels comfortable at the time,” he said.

“And the failure to plan for that was a much bigger flaw in the strategy than the fact that it was targeted at the wrong disease.”

Earlier, Mr Hancock said he believed that there was a doctrine which said transmission of Covid could not be stopped and he suggested more work should have been done on stopping coronavirus taking hold.

Mr Hancock has said he was “profoundly sorry” for each death caused by Covid.