China could have stopped Covid pandemic by closing borders, Matt Hancock tells MPs

UK could have delayed virus by only a week by barring travel, says health secretary

China could have stopped the global coronaviruspandemic by closing its borders to any international travel immediately after the pathogen emerged, health secretary Matt Hancock has said.

Mr Hancock told a parliamentary inquiry that change is needed at a global level to ensure that urgent action is taken at the borders as soon as novel diseases appear in future.

And he said it was “absolutely vital” that Beijing is more transparent about future disease outbreaks, blaming Chinese secrecy for delaying the global response.

“One of the things that hindered our early response was a lack of transparency from China, and that must be put right in terms of future preparedness for future pandemics,” Mr Hancock told a joint hearing of the House of Commons health and science committees.

“It is absolutely vital for the world that China is more transparent about its health information as soon as it understands that there are problems in future.”

Mr Hancock said that experience had proven the government right in its decision not to close the UK borders unilaterally last spring, which he said would have delayed the spread of Covid-19 by only a week.

He said he had “clear clinical advice” that preventing International travel into and out of the UK would not protect the country unless all other countries did the same.

And he pointed to Italy and the US which both developed serious outbreaks despite tough action at borders.

Mr Hancock told MPs: “The position that we took was based not just on World Health Organisation’s advice but on their international health regulations, which stipulate that closing borders is not an appropriate response in a pandemic. That is the international regulation.

“The clinical advice we received was that unilaterally taking action at the borders would only have a small effect, in terms of delaying the response, of about a week. And indeed, early in the pandemic this was proven by both the United States and Italy, who took direct action at the border and they still have the disease. “

He added: “If everybody takes action on borders and restricts movement, then clearly, that can have a big impact and so we’ve strengthened our border policy throughout and now we have one of the strongest borders policies in the world.

“My reflection on it at the time - and this is very important for the lessons learned - is that the only way the world could have stopped this virus getting out of China is if China itself had stopped people leaving China, because as soon as people were allowed to leave China to go to another place then - unless the whole world took action on borders, as they have now - it would only have delayed to a degree.

“That was the clear, clinical advice, and it is one of the things that we absolutely must change at the global level, that part of the response to a dangerous pathogen needs to be health action at the border.”

one of the things that hindered our early response was a lack of transparency from China, and that must be put right in terms of future preparedness for future pandemics, it is absolutely vital for the world that China is more transparent about its health information as soon as it understands that there are problems in future.