Covid variants will continue to develop for “many years”, England Health Secretary Sajid Javid has admitted.
But he insists there was “no country better prepared” to deal with them than the UK.
After making a statement to the House of Commons, Mr Javid was confronted with the possibility that we face decades of new waves of Covid variants.
Labour MP John Spellar said: “I am sure he (Sajid Javid) accepts that Covid is now endemic and therefore will be returning for years if not decades.
“In that sense, surely by now instead of the erratic response we have seen, we should have a well-prepared plan and chain of command ready to be activated as soon as a new variant is detected, as well as a supply of trained personnel to operate it. So why does his department seem to be continually surprised by the arrival of variants, and instead of a plan we have chaos and panic?”
Mr Javid said he regretted the way the Labour MP had “framed his question”.
He told MPs: “There are going to be variants of Covid-19, as he says, for many years and indeed there have been many hundreds of variants, and there is no country in the world that is better on the surveillance of those variants.
“There is no country better prepared if you look at how quickly and swiftly the UK reacted.”
