Boris Johnson can’t get enough of experts again – but it’s his dithering that’s costing the NHS

The problems in our swamped hospitals are now so serious that the current restrictions are unlikely to be enough to hold the line

The government has gone full circle by putting the medical and scientific advisers back in the front line of its attempts to stop the NHS emergency spiralling out of control.

Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, is touring the broadcast studios, relegating ministers to the earlier warm-up act. Daily televised briefings by Allegra Stratton, Boris Johnson’s press secretary, due to begin this afternoon, have been put on hold. Now, the government can’t get enough of experts. 

Whitty came with a stark message: the coronavirus crisis is at its worst point, and every time we ignore the stay at home edict, we are potentially a link in the chain that leads to someone catching the disease.

Johnson can hardly be blamed for returning to the strategy deployed in the first lockdown last March, when Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, were informative and reassuring at the daily Downing Street press conferences. 

Since then, although ministers would never admit it, politicians have become less trusted by the public, with a bit of help from Dominic Cummings and Johnson’s tendency to dither and delay before finally acting.  

But the medics and scientists face a much more difficult task than in the first lockdown as they try to persuade the public to stick to the rules. Ministers say people are more compliant than they were in the four-week lockdown in England last November, but are privately worried about a drop in compliance compared to the shutdown which began last March. 

Statistics from Apple show that walking in England in the current lockdown is at 61 per cent of the pre-pandemic average, compared to 37 per cent at the same stage last March. For driving, the figures are up from 36 per cent last March to 62 per cent.  

A “fatigue factor” is partly to blame; indeed, some advisers are surprised it took so long to kick in. Today the rules are less strict than during the first lockdown, with pre-school nurseries open and people allowed to exercise outdoors with one person from outside their household.  

The government has rightly been criticised for its mixed messages, such as on whether or not to go to work. There is now a new contradictory message that it is hard to avoid: ministers are promoting the vaccine campaign to encourage take-up, but in doing so are in danger of handing people an excuse for complacency and turning a blind eye to the rules. These will often be small transgressions, but Whitty’s message is that they all count – perhaps fatally.  

The problems in our swamped hospitals are now so serious that the current measures are unlikely to be enough to hold the line. But Johnson wants to enforce the existing restrictions more strictly and see whether they work over the next 10 days before imposing yet more.  

Although most Tory MPs reluctantly swallowed England’s third lockdown, the Covid-19 sceptics among them are now demanding a clear exit strategy for relaxing the curbs, linked to the rollout of the vaccine. Ministers will publish daily figures on the number of people vaccinated, but are rightly wary about giving a firm timetable for easing restrictions. The prime minister continues to look nervously over his shoulder at the menacing shadow cast by his noisy Covid-19 sceptics, who don't speak for a majority of Tory MPs but still fill the airwaves.  

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is calling for nurseries to be closed, saying: "There probably is more that we could do." In his first speech of the year, he said: “Even in the best of times, you can’t be indecisive in government. In the worst of times, indecision can be fatal.”  

Johnson will probably bow to the inevitable on nurseries, as he did on school closures. But not yet. It’s a familiar pattern, and a depressing one; hospitals cannot afford any more dither and delay. Time for Johnson to obey his own edict and protect the NHS.