Boris Johnson: 'I’m not sure Covid lockdowns worked during pandemic'

29 September 2024, 07:38

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has revealed he is “no longer sure” his decision to put the country into Covid lockdowns worked.

Writing in his new memoir, Johnson said lockdowns certainly “had some effect” but he has doubts whether they made a tangible difference.

He said: “There were always two waves, whether you were in China, where lockdowns were ruthlessly enforced, or Sweden, where they took a more voluntary approach.”

“Maybe there are limits to human agency,” the extract continued.

"Maybe it isn’t possible for government action to repel the waves of a highly contagious disease, any more than it is possible to repel the tide of the Thames.

“I am not saying that lockdowns achieved nothing; I am sure they had some effect.

“But were they decisive in beating back the disease, turning that wave down?

"All I can say is that I am no longer sure.”

This comes after Chris Whitty told the Covid inquiry that some onlookers might say the UK overstated the risk that the virus posed to the public at the start of the pandemic.

Prof Whitty, the UK's chief medical officer, said he still worries about whether the government and its advisers found the right balance between public protections and personal freedoms.

He said: “I was worried at the beginning. I still worry, actually in retrospect, about whether we got the level of concern right,” he said.

“Were we either over pitching it so that people were incredibly afraid of something where in fact, their actuarial risk was low, or we were not pitching it enough and therefore people didn’t realise the risk they were walking into.

“I think that balance is really hard, and arguably, some people would say we, if anything we overdid it, rather than under [at] the beginning.”

But he said that the arguments against widespread Covid restrictions were "obviously not true", and said that they should not be followed in any future pandemic - "unless you can demonstrate it."

He added: "I think we probably should have been swifter off the mark in spotting long Covid as it emerged, although I think we were relatively quick and it wasn't obvious, we could have done something different as a result.

"The main thing we could do at the beginning, before we understood it slightly better, was to reduce the amount of Covid. If you don't get Covid, you don't get long Covid."

Discussing the shielding of elderly and vulnerable people, Prof Whitty said the policy had pluses and minuses.

He said: "I think it was beneficial in one way, harming another way, and uncertain in a third."

Asked if he would consider a similar approach in a future pandemic, he added: "There are two things I would definitely do. I think shielding, I'm unsure about, it would depend on the situation.

"I definitely think that the risk classification is really important because there are many other things that flow from them. And indeed, you don't know what will flow from them always when you do it.

"And secondly, I do think it's important to put in place a mechanism to support people who rationally have chosen to take themselves out of society, to better their ability to protect themselves.

"Whether the particular approach to shielding we took is an appropriate one to use, again, in respiratory infection, I honestly don't know."