Then-Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered the old protocols to be ripped up after the extreme practice was revealed during a pandemic test called Operation Cygnus, he revealed yesterday.
The Chancellor and Deputy PM, Oliver Dowden gave evidence to the Covid inquiry on Wednesday – the first current serving government ministers to do so.
Mr Hunt admitted that the UK had been too focused on a flu-like pandemic and had not done enough preparation for other kinds of viruses.
And he admitted that he had been “concerned” about the “fragility” of the NHS after years of austerity cuts to the service.
He said: “As a country, we had very fragile finances in 2010 following the global financial crisis, and we had to do some work in order to get ourselves in a position where we could afford the big increase that I negotiated in 2018.”
Britain failed to learn the lessons from other countries about getting ready for a pandemic – like Korea – and there was “groupthink” in the civil service and other developed nations that stopped people challenging ideas, he said.
And the fact that it could spread incredibly easily meant many people believed the only way to stop it would be some form of herd immunity.
However, quarantining people sooner may have avoided the need for lockdown, he added.
He said: “In that period, transmission had increased to about 5,000 a day, and then it was inevitable that you were going to have to use a lockdown.
“Had we got on the case much earlier with that approach, we might have avoided that.”
Mr Dowden insisted that when he was in charge of pandemic preparedness, he was assured the UK was in pretty good shape for one.
And our focus on a “no deal Brexit” had helped boost the UK’s emergency planning, not harmed it.