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