Vallance: ‘We need a pandemic handbook in future’

Sir Patrick Vallance has called on the government to create a ‘pandemic handbook’ in order to use lockdown restrictions more effectively in the future.

Labour MP Graham Stringer asked England’s chief scientific adviser about what lessons should be learned from the Covid pandemic.

Sir Patrick told the science and technology committee: “The world should learn from this and we should learn from it so that there’s an advice handbook for the future and also to take into account the different characteristics of viruses.

“The transmissibility associated with Omicron is different from the transmissibility associated with Alpha or Wuhan strain, and probably the measures would make a different effect as well.”