Former England health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said the Government must be prepared to 'change tack' if the current coronavirus restrictions fail to stem the spread of the disease.
Mr Hunt, who chairs the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, said ministers had just two weeks to assess whether the latest measures were working.
“If it turns out that we’re not doing what we need to do to get this under control, yes, we have to change tack,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One.
“In this pandemic, everything seems to be in sort of two-week cycles, so the infections go up and then two weeks later you see admissions to hospitals go up, two weeks later you see ICU (intensive care unit) admissions go up.
“So I think we’ve got about two weeks, no more, to see whether what we announced this week is working.”
Mr Hunt said that ultimately decisions were for ministers, not for scientists.
“I think in some ways in the start of the crisis we put scientists under too much pressure. When we said we’re following the science, in some ways you’re turning Chris Whitty into the secretary of state when you do that,” he said.
