Jenny Harries with Boris Johnson

Tindle News

Former England deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries talking about the pandemic with then PM Boris Johnson in 2020

Transcript

00:00 Hi folks, I've asked the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jenny Harris, to come here to

00:05 Downing Street. Jenny, perhaps you could tell everybody what are the symptoms of Covid-19

00:11 coronavirus?

00:12 So the main symptoms that people present with are fever, usually quite a high fever, and

00:17 a cough, but we do get people coming with sore throats, shortness of breath.

00:22 And what should we do when we have those symptoms?

00:25 So the first thing is we want to take ourselves away from other people, just in case we have

00:29 it and prevent anybody catching it from us. But the important thing is that people who

00:33 feel unwell and have symptoms stay out of the way of health services to start with,

00:37 until we work out what the problem is.

00:39 So that's our advice to people who think that they may have the symptoms of coronavirus,

00:44 is to stay at home, is that right?

00:46 Is to stay at home. Effectively what you're doing is isolating yourself, taking you away

00:50 from other people, just to reduce that risk of transmitting the disease, of infecting

00:54 somebody else.

00:55 People think they've heard this lots of times, but could you explain one more time why washing

00:59 your hands is so important?

01:01 So there are two sorts of things we should do really. Washing hands is one, and catching

01:06 coughs and sneezes with the tissue is the other. But for the washing the hands, this

01:10 virus spreads with droplet spread, and with what we call fomites. So effectively if the

01:15 virus drops on the surface, and we pick it up, and then we touch our eyes, our mouth,

01:21 or our nose, we can become infected. So of course, if you wash your hands very frequently

01:27 and thoroughly for at least 20 seconds, and much more frequently than we normally do,

01:32 you will then reduce that risk of infecting yourself. So it's a really good protective

01:36 mechanism.

01:37 And who are the most vulnerable people in your family or in society that we should particularly

01:42 avoid getting infected?

01:44 It's still quite early days in our understanding of the disease. Children seem to be, they

01:49 get infections but not particularly badly. The ones we're really worried about are the

01:53 older people. So those 70, 80 and above, and people who've got chronic conditions, so things

02:00 like heart disease or some respiratory disease.

02:04 Because the reality is that most people won't experience a major disease, it will be a mild,

02:08 moderate illness, but it can be more dangerous for people who are much older or who have

02:15 pre-existing conditions.

02:16 Yes, so we really do need to look after our elderly people, our relatives or neighbours

02:20 perhaps and help them stay at home, helping them with shopping and that sort of thing

02:24 if they need to stay away from other people. But for most people, it really is going to

02:29 be quite a mild disease. Most people get a few symptoms for the first two or three days

02:34 and they're usually over it by a week.

02:36 Tell us about the value of wearing face masks. You see face masks around the place. Is there

02:40 any point to that?

02:41 If a healthcare professional hasn't advised you to wear a face mask, it's usually quite

02:46 a bad idea. People tend to leave them on, they contaminate the face mask and then wipe

02:51 it over something. So it's really not a good idea and doesn't help. However, if you are

02:56 a patient and you've been diagnosed with symptoms, with coronavirus, then you may be provided

03:02 with a face mask then and that's a good thing. You're protecting other people in your vicinity.

03:07 And it's noticeable that there are some countries where they've banned big sporting events and

03:12 they've stopped mass gatherings of one kind or another. Tell us why so far the medical

03:16 advice in this country is not to do that.

03:20 In this country, we have expert modelers looking at what we think will happen with the virus

03:25 and we've looked at what sorts of interventions might help manage this as we go forward, push

03:30 the peak of the epidemic forward. And in general, those sorts of events, big gatherings, are

03:37 not seen to be something which is going to have a big effect. So we don't want to disrupt

03:41 people's lives on doing that.

03:43 Right. Obviously, people are under a lot of pressure, politicians, governments around

03:46 the world, a lot of pressure to be seen to act. So they may do things that aren't necessarily

03:52 dictated by the science.

03:53 So as a professional, I'm absolutely delighted that we are following the science and the

03:58 evidence. There are other things that we can do in this country and the timing of that

04:03 is really important. We need to get the timing, firstly, on helping to stop the spread, continue

04:09 to contain the virus as much as we can, but then particularly for our elderly people to

04:14 find exactly the right points to give them advice.

04:17 And the timing is very important, is it?

04:18 Critical. Absolutely critical. If we put it in too early, we'll just pop up with another

04:22 epidemic peak later on. And if we leave it too late, we'll have missed the boat. But

04:28 because we have such brilliant modelers, we're pretty confident we will know the right points.

04:32 We've got very clear advice about when we should intervene and that's exactly what I

04:37 think we should do, which is what we're obviously dividing the effort.

04:41 Thank you very much, Dr Jenny Harries, Deputy Chief Medical Officer. Thank you very much

04:44 for coming along to Diane's Street this afternoon.

04:46 Thank you.

04:46 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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