A member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said he was “wrong” about how infectious coronavirus would be at the start of the pandemic.
Professor Calum Semple, asked his thoughts on the last year of lockdown, told Sky News: “The things I reflect on, and I wasn’t a member of Sage right at the start, I really appreciate how infectious this virus was, that was one aspect which I’ll put my hands up and I got wrong.
“The virus undoubtedly is infectious in close-quarters by respiratory aerosol and droplet in close-quarters.
“That’s one of the aspects I certainly didn’t get right.”
He added: “It’s incredibly difficult, what as a society we didn’t appreciate, and as a group of scientists what we didn’t appreciate, was that the virus was going to move into the country essentially through British people returning from holidays in Italy, Spain and France.
“The assumption was that it would be more traditional, long-distance foreign travellers coming back in that would bring the virus in, we hadn’t predicted it would be the surge of our own people coming back.”
