Sir Patrick Vallance has been criticised over a coronavirus deaths prediction graph that left Britons “horrified”. The Chief Scientific Adviser was grilled by the Science and Technology Select Committee alongside Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty. Both Government advisers were summoned before MPs to explain their evidence for a national lockdown, especially regarding their 4,000 deaths “worst-case scenario”.
Labour MP Graham Stringer told Sir Patrick: “People have been horrified at the way that was presented.
“They thought it was a biased way of presenting it, and not at all clear.
“You must realise that if you put a graph saying 4,000 deaths a day, that is going to be the message that the vast majority of people take home.
“Do you regret that at all?”
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Sir Patrick defended the decision, saying: “I think the aim of the presentation was to try and get as much of the information as we could out there.
“The six-week projections were the ones that were important, I think, in terms of their reliability.
“Those were models for the reasonable worst-case scenario, and the reasonable worst-case scenario is something that people have been interested in.
“They were modelled at the time to try and project that.”
The Prime Minister was reportedly influenced by the modelling from Cambridge University and Public Health England, which suggested 4,000 deaths per day in December.
There are now mounting concerns that the graphs shown at the press conference announcement on October 31 to justify the lockdown were out-of-date and alarmist.
However, the NHS has confirmed that daily hospital COVID-19 admissions are now higher than on March 23 when the first lockdown was implemented.
The number of confirmed positive cases is around 20,000 a day.
The rules are due to start on November 5 and will expire on December 2.
