Government to provide daily updates delayed by 24 hours to allow time for verification of information

The UK government has done an about face on the controversial decision to withhold information about the geographical spread of the coronavirus, as the UK’s chief medical officer admitted a “communications fumble”.

On Wednesday, Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, said the government would no longer provide daily updates on the location of patients who had tested positive “due to the number cases” following a 70% increase. The decision led to accusations of secrecy and concerns that it would lead to the spread of fake news.

But on Thursday morning Whitty announced a U-turn, saying the government would provide daily updates but they would be delayed by 24 hours to allow time for information to be verified.

Speaking to the Commons health committee he said: “I think we had a bit of a communications fumble on this one. We are intending to provide geographical information.

“We are intending to have some delay of about 24 hours to be absolutely sure we’ve got the details right. I think we do intend to continue with these geographical things. And in fact, in due course, will use maps and other things to enhance that.”

Whitty also said the UK has mainly moved into the “delay phase” of tackling the virus, meaning measures to tackle the disease would be stepped up.

He said: “We have moved from a situation where we are mainly in ‘contain’, with some ‘delay’ built in, to we are now mainly ‘delay’,” he said, although elements of the contain process remained in place.

 The government’s so called battle plan says of the ‘delay’ phase: “Action that would be considered could include population distancing strategies (such as school closures, encouraging greater home working, reducing the number of large-scale gatherings) to slow the spread of the disease throughout the population, while ensuring the country’s ability to continue to run as normally as possible.”

He added that he had a “reasonably high degree of confidence” that the “upper limit” of the death rate for the coronavirus was 1%. But he added that while deaths from the coronavirus could be a “very small number” as a proportion, it could still be a “large absolute number” depending on how many people were infected. The impact on the health service would be most sharply felt over a period of around three weeks to nine weeks at the height of the epidemic.

The health minister, Edward Argar, had said that the government was trying to find a “tech solution” to provide daily updates on the geographical spread of the disease.

But Whitty rejected following the example of South Korea, where phone alerts are available to signify when users come within 100 metres of a confirmed case, based on government data.

He said: “Some of the people who’ve had the infection have had a lot of problems and vilification in social media and even occasionally in more mainstream media. As a doctor, I’m very against getting any patient-identifiable information. And I think for this reason, we should also be careful. I’m not in favour of going down to street level or you’re within 100 metres of a coronavirus [case], I think that is the wrong approach for this country.”

Asked when the government planned to provide daily information about the spread of the disease, he said: “This is very much a question operationally for Public Health England. I would rather have slightly delayed information that we’re completely confident of than jumping ahead of ourselves in the wish to be timely, and then ending up with information that we subsequently have to modify.”

“The intention is to do this quite soon. I’m expecting this to be within a couple of weeks’ time, but hopefully earlier than that.”

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk