Matt Hancock rejected Chris Whitty's calls to slash Covid quarantine 'because it would show ministers had been wrong'
6 March 2023, 11:05 | Updated: 6 March 2023, 11:10
Matt Hancock kept people isolated for two weeks despite expert advice to cut the quarantine period to five days because he feared the change would show ministers had been "getting it wrong".
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England's chief medical officer Mr Whitty said in November 2020 he thought five days' self-isolation would be "pretty well as good" as two weeks for people who were close contacts of others infected with Covid.
But the former health secretary said that would represent a "massive loosening" of the rules, adding that the move would "worry people" and "imply we'd be getting it wrong".
The messages were sent via WhatsApp, and were part of a massive cache of Covid lockdown-era government communications leaked to the Telegraph.
The correspondence also reveals that Mr Hancock wanted to spin the Covid vaccines as a "Hancock triumph".
The paper also published an exchange between Mr Hancock and chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty in November 2020, during which the health secretary asked the top health official if the a 14-day isolation period had been "too long all this time".
Sir Chris told him: "CMOs and sage in favour of a pilot with presumption in favour of testing for five days in lieu of isolation (alternative 10 days isolation).
"But needs a pilot to test this out and check it works and MHRA have not yet signed off for self use."
"So test every day for just five days?" Mr Hancock responded. "That sounds like a massive loosening.
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"The modelling suggests it's pretty well as good. And we think adherence likely to be good.
"The modellers were in favour of three days (given the lag time to get a result) but we were not in favour," Sir Chris said.
Mr Hancock said he was amazed, adding: "This sounds very risky and we can't go backwards - wouldn't test every day for 10 days be a safer starting point."
"We could push out to seven but the benefits really flatten off after five.
"We would expect symptomatic people to get a PCR test as normal," the medical official replied. "So has the 14-day isolation been too long all this time?," Mr Hancock asked.
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Told that the two-week period was only "marginally safer" than 10 days, he said: "So, I think moving to seven-day daily testing for contacts would be huge for adherence, but going below that would serious worry people and imply we'd been getting it wrong.
"Presumably we can explain some of the shorter period because the test would pick up the disease before symptoms," he said.
Mr Hancock and others have described the WhatsApp leaks as only a "partial" account. The former health secretary has condemned them as a "massive betrayal" designed to support an "anti-lockdown agenda".
