The UK’s former health secretary testifies at COVID inquiry that he argued for an earlier lockdown

By SYLVIA HUI
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Former British health secretary Matt Hancock has told the U.K.’s COVID-19 inquiry that Britain’s government would have saved many lives if it acted sooner and imposed a national lockdown three weeks earlier than it did in March 2020. Hancock played a key role in the U.K.’s pandemic response as head of the health department. He was contesting widespread criticisms about his leadership at a time when the country faced its biggest public health crisis in a century. Countering accusations of incompetence, Hancock said that he had started advocating for a U.K. lockdown around early March 2020 after speaking with his counterpart in Italy, the first country in Europe to see a huge first wave of COVID-19.