So a lockdown could simply be implemented overnight?
The advice was "as soon as possible".
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Vallance told the committee that SAGE advised the government to impose lockdown measures “as soon as possible” on the 16 or 18 March. He said this happened as soon as data showed further restrictions were needed. “Looking back, you can see the data may have preceded that but the data was not available before that.”
Scientists realised in mid-March that “we were further ahead in the epidemic than had been thought”.
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Vallance told the committee that coronavirus was likely to be around for a number of years.
Asked about the potential of a second wave, he said what most people mean by this is essentially a re-emergence of the first wave, which has been suppressed.
But he told MPs that if there is an increase in cases in the winter: “You could argue that is the tail end of the first wave still.
“And I think it is quite probable that we will see this virus coming back in different waves over a number of years.”
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Sir Patrick said the evidence of the effectiveness of wearing face coverings in public was "not straightforward" but added they could have a "marginal but positive" impact on reducing the spread of the virus.
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The snag is, that if wearing a mask leads to you potentially exposing yourself more often, then any
marginal benefit is wiped out. Eg Throwing a pair of dice, a double six might be marginal, but throw them several times, it becomes less marginal.
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On testing, which the government has been working to increase, Dr Harries said community testing was stopped in the middle of March because of issues with capacity.
She said: "If we had unlimited capacity, and the ongoing support beyond that, then we perhaps would choose a slightly different approach."
Asked if there was anything he would have changed when he looks back, Sir Patrick told the committee: "I think if we’d managed to ramp testing capacity quicker it would have been beneficial.
"And, you know, for all sorts of reasons that didn’t happen."
It was also revealed in the committee that the main "seeding" of the epidemic in UK was as a result of people coming to the UK from Italy and Spain in UK in early March.
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All countries , including Germany and South Korea had problems with testing capacity.