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LONDON — No one in the U.K. government wanted to actively pursue coronavirus herd immunity — but there didn’t seem to be an alternative to allowing the virus to take hold.
That’s the claim from former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings amid a bombshell committee hearing on Tuesday about the handling of the pandemic.
The former top aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was presented as inevitable in government that the virus would have to rip through the U.K. population at the start of 2020, before thinking changed and the government began to lock the country down.
That was all based on two false assumptions, according to Cummings: that vaccines would not be available that year and that the public would not accept long lockdown measures and draconian tracing regimes that were being implemented in Asia.
Government scientists and advisers thought it was therefore a choice between allowing the virus to spread during the summer or using restrictions to delay the peak until the winter, when the National Health Service would already be snowed under by annual pressures.
Cummings told the joint science and health committees that the thinking in government was the first option would be “terrible” while the second would be “even worse.”
“Obviously no one is saying that they want this to happen,” he said about the thinking at the time. “The point is it was seen as an inevitability. You either have herd immunity by September after a single peak or you have herd immunity by January with a second peak.”
The thinking around herd immunity began to change as the government realized the true scale of what was about to hit Britain, Cummings said.
The claims about herd immunity are controversial because minsters and officials have since insisted it was never part of their plan, with Cummings accusing them of lying.
POLITICO’s London Playbook reported Wednesday, ahead of the hearing, that Cummings privately ordered senior Cabinet ministers to deny herd immunity was ever government policy.
“A year ago he was ordering ministers to deny herd immunity was government policy, now he’s calling them liars for sticking to the lines he gave them,” said someone who has seen WhatsApp messages in which Cummings allegedly issued those instructions.
This article is part of POLITICO’s premium policy service: Pro Health Care. From drug pricing, EMA, vaccines, pharma and more, our specialized journalists keep you on top of the topics driving the health care policy agenda. Email [email protected] for a complimentary trial.
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