TOP medical official Professor Chris Whitty conceded that Britain entered lockdown too late at the beginning of the pandemic, in evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry today.

The government’s chief medical officer said that society should have been locked down earlier as the pandemic struck.

He told the inquiry: “The idea of essentially, by law, locking down all society is not something which had previously been used.

“You could argue, and I think it is reasonable to argue, that that is something we should have cottoned on to an earlier stage.”

Sir Chris added euphemistically that “I think that the way that [then prime minister Boris Johnson] took decisions was unique to him.”

But he was reluctant to go further in criticising politicians’ conduct, acknowledging that the government was “chaotic” but that it was probably so in all countries.

Sir Chris also defended not raising the alarm across government in mid-January 2020 about coronavirus, despite his deputy Sir Jonathan Van-Tam warning that a pandemic was imminent.

In extracts from his witness statement read to the inquiry, Sir Jonathan said he became seriously concerned about Covid on January 16 2020.

The former deputy chief medical officer said it was clear this was a novel coronavirus, it was “fairly clear that human-to-human transmission was occurring” and “my view was that this would be a significant pandemic.”

Lead counsel to the inquiry Hugo Keith KC said Sir Jonathan raised his concerns with Sir Chris, whose “response was to wait and monitor developments.”

Sir Chris told the inquiry: “So, Jonathan, and I think he would agree with this, is quite instinctive in some of these decisions — very often, rightly.

“He is a very able epidemiologist and thinker in this area, but if I had said to him: ‘OK, what is the evidence on which this is going to be a pandemic?’ he would have said: ‘It just feels like that to me.’ That’s quite a narrow basis on which to make quite big decisions.”

Sir Chris said action should have been taken earlier against the spread of Covid but denied warning ministers against lockdowns.

Boris Johnson was “bamboozled” by advice during the Covid crisis, while PM Rishi Sunak, then chancellor, was content to see people die, the inquiry by retired judge Heather Hallett had earlier been told.