Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, has warned that Britain is “nowhere near the end” of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking alongside Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has returned to frontline politics after his own bout with the Wuhan virus left him in intensive care for a spell, the Public Health England (PHE) technocrat issued his warning in an answer to a question from Robert Peston of ITV, who had pointed out that Britain’s death toll was “possibly the worst in Europe”.
Whitty insisted that, while “we must learn lessons at the right point”, it was too early to say how the British government and public health bureaucracy had performed relative to officialdom in other countries.
“We are nowhere near the end of this epidemic,” he said, adding that “there is a very long way to run for every country in the world on this.”
This seemed somewhat at odds with the Prime Minister’s earlier statement that “we are through the peak of this disease” to some critics — although the CMO did also say that Johnson was right when he said the British people were “through the first phase of this”.
Breitbart London has reported on the Prime Minister’s comments in full here.
WATCH LIVE: #coronavirus press conference (30 April 2020)
Speakers:
🔵 PM @BorisJohnson
🔵 Prof Chris Whitty, @CMO_England
🔵 Sir Patrick Vallance, @uksciencechief https://t.co/7vyDHidgTJ— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) April 30, 2020
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