Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, and Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, became household names after they were propelled into the spotlight by the Covid pandemic. For the past two years, they have flanked Boris Johnson at Downing Street briefings armed with PowerPoint slides and exponential curves. But with the announcement this week of England’s plan for “living with Covid” the advisers are expected to take a step back. Here are some of their most memorable moments.
Vallance says UK has ‘herd immunity’ strategy
Early in the coronavirus pandemic, Sir Patrick Vallance suggested that building herd immunity in the UK through widespread transmission could be the UK’s strategy for handling the pandemic.
On 13 March 2020, Sir Patrick Vallance, speaking to the BBC’s Today show, said the key things the UK needed to do was to fight the pandemic was to “build up some degree of herd immunity”, saying that because the vast majority of people with coronavirus get a mild illness, herd immunity would mean that more people are immune to the virus and transmission would be reduced.
The concept of building herd immunity through exposure prompted backlash and was criticised by figures such as former health secretary Jeremy Hunt.
20,000 deaths would be a ‘good outcome’, says Patrick Vallance
Speaking to the health select committee on the 17 March 2020, Sir Patrick Vallance stated that if the number of coronavirus deaths reached 20,000 or below, that would be a “good outcome”, although it would still be “horrible” and “an enormous number of deaths”.
Of course, the UK’s total coronavirus death toll greatly surpassed this prediction. As of 25 February 2022, there were a total of 161,104 deaths recorded within 28 days of a positive test.
Whitty and Patrick Vallance say they don’t want any part of the politics
Amid the controversy over Dominic Cummings’s journey to Durham during lockdown, Whitty and Vallance were asked whether they were “entirely comfortable with the prime minister telling you you can’t answer questions about Dominic Cummings”.
In response, Chris Whitty said: “I can assure you, the desire not to get pulled into politics is far stronger on the part of Sir Patrick [Vallance] and me than it is on the prime minister”.
Vallance added: “I’m a civil servant, I’m politically neutral and I don’t want to get involved in politics at all”.
Whitty acknowledges mistakes were made at the start of the pandemic
On 10 June 2020, When looking at specific ways the UK could have improved their response to the coronavirus pandemic when it first emerged, Whitty said that if he had to choose one issue, it would be “looking at how we could speed up testing early on in the epidemic”.
“There are many good reasons why it was tricky, but if I was to play things again, and this is largely based on what some other countries were able to do, in particular Germany, I think that’s the one thing we would have put more emphasis on at an earlier stage”.
In April 2020, the UK’s daily coronavirus testing rate had only just passed 10,000.
Whitty describes Covid-denier as ‘young lad’ who will be ‘model citizen in due course’
In June 2021, a video was widely shared on social media of a man putting Whitty in a headlock when he declined to be in a photograph with him.
Whitty later said that he did not “think anything of it” and was “surprised that the media picked up on it”.
“I’m sure he will become a model citizen in due course,” he added.
Both Lewis Hughes and Jonathan Chew, who were both involved in the incident and appeared in the video, were prosecuted.
Jonathan Chew was sentenced to eight weeks in prison in January after admitting harassment of Whitty on 29 June 2021.
Lewis Hughes, who was sacked from his job as an estate agent after the incident, received a suspended sentence last July for his involvement.
Whitty says people like Nicki Minaj should be ashamed of ‘peddling untruths’
Asked about claims by the rapper Nicki Minaj that the coronavirus vaccine could make you impotent, Whitty said that people who “know they are peddling untruths … should be ashamed”.
He said: “There are a group of people who have strange beliefs, and that’s fine … but there are also people who go round trying to discourage other people from taking a vaccine which could be life saving.
“And many of those people, I regret to say, know that they are peddling untruths, and still do it. And in my view, they should be ashamed.”
Whitty tells people to prioritise what matters to them at Christmas
In December last year, as the Omicron wave started taking off, Whitty said that “people should prioritise what matters, and that by definition means de-prioritising other things”.
“I think I would recommend that, and most people would recommend that, and you don’t need a medical degree to realise that is a sensible thing to do with an incredibly infectious virus”.
At the time of Whitty’s comments, Independent Sage published a statement calling for an emergency circuit break lockdown given the rise of the Omicron variant, with numbers of infections doubling in England every two days.
