in his first coronavirus briefing for weeks, president trump has sought to defend his administration's handling of the pandemic and urged people to wear face masks if they can't maintain a safe social distance. he acknowledged that the outbreak is likely to get worse before it gets better. russian attempts to interfere in the uk's domestic affairs have been described as ‘the new normal‘ in a long—awaited report by british lawmakers. mps on a key house of commons committee describe the uk as one of russia's top targets and criticised the government for "badly underestimating" the threat and the response it required. the us secretary of state mike pompeo has said washington wants to build a coalition of like—minded allies to counter, what he called, the threat from china. he was speaking on a visit to london, where he met prime minister boris johnson and his british counterpart dominic raab.

it is about1:30am. it is about 1:30am. you are up—to—date on the headlines. now on bbc news — panorama. tonight, panorama investigates the uk's plans to fight coronavirus. it was just this fatalism that we're all going to get it and we might as welljust get it over with. we speak to scientists at the heart of the government's response. we mustn't be catastrophists. we could do a lot of damage by raising false alarms. the world health organization was calling for urgent action. we have rung the alarm bell loud and clear. the only way you really deal with this virus is by actually stopping transmission. we reveal the early warning that hundreds of thousands could die. with the benefit of hindsight, clearly, it would have been beneficial to lock down earlier. how many lives could have been saved if the government had acted sooner? it was a gamble that we had

no right to take with the british public. from this evening, i must give the british people a very simple instruction — you must stay at home. the start of lockdown — four months ago. it wasn't how the government saw this crisis unfolding. the uk had planned for a pandemic and rehearsed its response. this was the starting point for the government's response to coronavirus — the 2011 flu pandemic plan. it spells out in detail the likely stages of an outbreak and the measures to deal with it. it draws on lessons learned from previous pandemics, including one a hundred years ago.

the spanish flu of 1918 killed 200,000 in the uk and millions worldwide. influenza is still considered one of the most serious peacetime threats to the uk. we've had sort of five documented pandemics of flu in the last 100 01’ so years. so, it was sort of reasonable to base most of the planning around flu. back then, efforts to stop the virus failed. it kept on coming. the second wave, deadlier than the first. it took two years for spanish ‘flu to burn itself out. a century later, the government's flu plan assumed future pandemics could follow a similar path. if you read the 2011 pandemic flu plan, they say, "don't cause social disruption, keep people calm. it's going to run through. it's inevitable.

it's unstoppable. " in earlyjanuary, the government started to put its plans into action. they'd been monitoring events in china. good evening. the chinese authorities are taking drastic action to try to stop the spread of the new coronavirus... wuhan, the city at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, was locked down. the world health organization said, "prepare for the worst." make no mistake, it has not yet become a global health emergency. it may yet become one. the chief medical officer has revised the risk to the uk population from very low to low, and has concluded that, while there is an increased likelihood that cases may arise in this country, we are well prepared, and well equipped

to deal with them. advising the government on the response to coronavirus was sage — the scientific advisory group for emergencies. it asked several academics to analyse data about the virus and assess the threat to the uk. we started working on this in mid january, and we realised that the epidemic in wuhan had been much larger than we thought. as to how we would navigate it, i mean, one of the key things there is how lethal is the disease, because that really determines how much one spends and invests in a response. initially, there was uncertainty about how covid—19 might take hold in the uk. there is still a great deal of care needed when you are translating one country to another, and you think about the structure of china, it's a bigger country, so it's just very difficult to translate one social cultural setting to another.

there's a lot of emerging disease all the time. it's a big problem. and so i think it's fair to say we could do a lot of damage by raising false alarms. we mustn't be catastrophists. with no vaccine or treatment, the who was urging strong measures to stop the virus spreading. any delay is likely to have long term and major consequences. i believe that we have to have a "no regrets" policy, otherwise we will always be basically pulling our punches. by the end of january, coronavirus had spread to 19 countries. the who put the world on alert, declaring a health emergency of international concern. the medicaljournal, the lancet, published a series of articles by chinese doctors.

this new virus was deadly. it was absolutely clear by the very end of january that we were dealing with a virus that had a high mortality rate for those people who were admitted to hospital. this was not a simple viral pneumonia. this was a lethal multi—organ illness. please, world, wake up. hammer this virus and prevent it from being a serious problem or a crisis in the rest of the world. people arriving here from china and other high risk countries were quarantined or told to self—isolate. in february, travellers returning from italy were already seeding the virus across the uk. at the beginning of march,

the government told the country how it planned to fight the virus. the plan has four strands. containing the virus, delaying its spread, researching its origins and cure, and finally mitigating the impact should the virus become more widespread. the government said protecting the nhs and saving lives was central to its planning. it said spread of the virus may be inevitable and its aim was to slow it down. i don't think we ever thought the pandemic could be stopped. i mean, it hasn't been stopped in a global sense. there's no way we could eliminate this virus in the human population. from the start of the crisis, the government asked scientists to model or predict what might happen. doing nothing, it was told, would mean half a million dead. and can you give me an idea about the conversations that were going on in sage

when you were looking at half a million deaths? well, i think the... that, that half a million deaths, i have to stress, that half a million deaths is the "do nothing" scenario. yeah. and we never really expected half a million deaths to be seen, because obviously the government will act on that, and the question is, what is the policy? basically, you have two options when a disease like this is coming. suppression means you're trying to get to zero cases. mitigation is you kind of think it's happening, and the trick is just to minimise the problem, right? so if a tsunami is coming, we don't try to stop the tsunami, right, we just try to ensure that the minimum number of people are harmed by it. some scientists advise against suppressing viruses for fear of creating a second wave of infection, as soon as suppression measures are lifted. mitigation looked like the best option. one of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go

and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population... without really taking as many draconian measures. i think we need to strike a balance. it was never the government's intention to let the virus spread unchecked. its strategy — mitigation — was to manage its spread and limit the damage. the government said the most vulnerable would be protected. but people would still die. it was just this fatalism, that "we're all going to get it and we might as well just get it over with", where i think that's fine, if you think of people as data points. but if you see their faces and you know their histories, it does raise alarm bells. sir david king is a former chief scientific adviser. he now leads a group of scientists who've been critical of the government's response to coronavirus. i can only give you one rational explanation for this strategy and that is that they were... had decided to go for herd immunity.

we did hear the phrase "herd immunity" although the government subsequently somehow denied that they were doing that. "herd immunity" is a term used by scientists who study the spread of infection. when a new disease appears and there's no vaccine, everyone is susceptible, so it spreads rapidly. as people recover, they are assumed to become immune. once enough people have had the disease, infections naturally begin to reduce. so, herd immunity means that people get it. whoever dies, dies. whoever is ill hopefully has access to medical treatment and recovers. and then whoever makes it has immunity to this virus, which means that over time, you have a population of whoever‘s left who has immunity. mitigating herd immunity is a balancing act. you accept people will catch the virus, but not too many all at once, so the nhs can cope. the government's scientific advisers

call it "flattening the curve." there are a number of measures that could be taken to try and reduce the peak and flatten it a bit, so we haven't got such a sharp number of people at any one time. the government said these measures could include closing schools, quarantining the sick and reducing social contact. kit yates is a biological mathematician who's followed the uk's response to coronavirus. flattening the curve is all about still letting the disease pass through the population, but at a slower rate so that we don't overwhelm the nhs. and the potential outcome of that is that you achieve some degree of herd immunity. but there was a problem. by the 5th of march, a team of scientists had delivered their findings on the likely number of deaths if a mitigation

strategy was pursued. at least 305,000. and the nhs could be overwhelmed. i mean, our projections of the potential health impact of the pandemic were known from about the 5th of march onwards and were, i think, actively discussed within government. professor ferguson says he told sage the findings were his best estimate of what was most likely to happen. he says other scientists had reached similar conclusions too. but there was scepticism within sage so the professor had to accept that his findings wouldn't be used as a forecast of what might be to come. if that result was known on march 5th, that's devastating. that means we wasted over two weeks when the virus was exponentially growing through communities up and down the country. this information should have been publicly available to be scrutinised by other scientists and experts, so that we could have had a public discussion and built public support

for an early lockdown. meanwhile for the uk, it was business as usual. most big events went ahead as planned. what are the chances of catching coronavirus at the cheltenham festival? on march 11th, the who escalated the threat level. we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction. we have therefore made the assessment that covid—19 can be characterised as a pandemic. the who urged countries to test, trace and isolate people with the virus in order to drive

down the number of infections. containing these outbreaks and suppressing them is the only strategy to use. don't anticipate a switch to the alternative strategy of mitigation, certainly not in a country like the uk where it should be possible to continue doing case finding and indeed contact tracing. we said please sustain the capacity to suppress outbreaks right throughout your outbreak management. that is the only way to get ahead of this fire. the government's testing capacity was limited, and on the 12th of march it all but abandoned testing and tracing outside of hospitals. the same day, the prime minister prepared us for how bad things could get. i must level with you, level with the british public, many more families are going to lose

loved ones before their time. coronavirus was now in 118 countries and more than 4,600 people were dead. europe was locking down. italy was first. in the uk, the prime minister told those with a fever or cough to stay at home. and he repeated advice first introduced in january. it is still vital, perhaps more vital than ever, that we remember to wash our hands. what did you think in march when other european countries were locking down and we were being told to wash our hands? it was absolutely baffling. i didn't really understand what was happening in the sense of like, what is the plan? i expected at that point for us to go into a hard lockdown. and instead, it seemed like giving up. at all stages, we have been guided by the science. we've adopted a balanced approach, guided at all times by the science. every day the science gets better.

the government kept saying they were following the science. and so several colleagues and myself wrote a letter to the times asking, "can we see the science? we don't understand it." the uk was still following its mitigation strategy, assuming we would be building up herd immunity. but had the government been clear enough with the british people? there are huge moral questions to this kind of strategy and also not doing it in a public way, not having a public discussion about it. that was about to change. senior scientific advisers began talking about herd immunity. it's not possible to stop everybody getting it. and it's also actually not desirable, because you want some immunity in the population. we need to have immunity to protect ourselves from this in the future. and that included people working on the uk's response to coronavirus. i've been leaked a set of notes

from a conference call on march 13th between the director of communications at nhs england and the communication teams from the medical royal colleges. the colleges were told there was no need to cancel face—to—face meetings for fear of catching the virus, and that herd immunity was government strategy. nhs england says it was just echoing what the chief scientific adviser, sir patrick vallance, had been saying in the media that day. communities will become immune to it and that's going to be an important part of controlling this longer term. 60% is the sort of figure you need to get herd immunity. on the same day sir patrick vallance talked about herd immunity, nhs england's medical director attended a sage meeting. panorama's been told he made it clear the government's mitigation strategy would result in more sick people than the nhs could cope with.

two days later, health secretary matt hancock denied herd immunity was government policy. herd immunity is not our policy. it's not our goal. our goal is to protect life and our policy is to fight the virus and protect the vulnerable and protect the nhs, and that's what we're doing. it seems strange to me that one wants to re—write the history of the way this epidemic has been managed to erase herd immunity from the story. ministers have now said herd immunity was not our goal, it was not our policy. well, i think it really came down to a public backlash where it was publicly unacceptable to say to people, you know, kiss goodbye to granny. it was a huge gamble and it was an unnecessary gamble, it was a gamble that we had no right

to take with the british public. the government has said herd immunity is the natural by—product of an epidemic. it told panorama, "it is categorically wrong to suggest herd immunity was the government's aim." by the middle of march, there had been 43 deaths in the uk. in italy parts of the health service were already becoming overwhelmed. they were now in the middle of a storm our government had been warned could be heading to the uk. on the 16th of march, nearly two weeks after professor ferguson delivered his estimate to government of the likely death toll if it continued with a mitigation strategy, he made his findings public. the paper said that if the government continued on that course, critical care capacity could be overwhelmed and suppression of infections was now the only viable option,

and that needed to happen imminently. he'd revised the number of deaths down to 250,000. and the nhs would still be swamped. all the modelling indicated by, really by before the 16th of march that the nhs just would not be able to cope, we would not be able to protect the elderly and vulnerable population well enough to avoid anything but a catastrophic epidemic. that evening, the prime minister made an announcement. we were now on the road to lockdown. now is the time for everyone to stop non—essential contact with others and to stop all unnecessary travel. responding to the warnings it had received, the government now introduced tougher measures. but full lockdown was still seven days away. simultaneously with our report coming out, the government announced the most stringent social distancing

policies they had up to that point but of course they were voluntary and there's a big distinction between voluntary and compulsory policies. the government knew it could be heading for huge numbers of deaths. but how soon? patrick vallance said on the 12th of march that we were four weeks behind italy. in fact, we were really only two weeks behind. and that was a consequence of getting this doubling time wrong. it gave us a false sense of security. the doubling time showed how fast the epidemic was growing. the scientists thought it was every five days. but they didn't have accurate data. we had a relatively poor handle on the true extent of infection in the country at that time. it was literally only that week that systematic nhs surveillance was stood up. what i mean by that is that started testing all hospital patients coming in to hospitals with relevant symptoms. in the days leading to lockdown, it became clear the doubling time was not every five days, but closer to three.

that meant possible disaster for the nhs was much closer than anyone in government thought. we were probably days away from reaching capacity in the nhs. do you remember how many? i think we were, we were probably a fortnight. yeah, within a fortnight we'd have hit capacity. i think the biggest thing which would have made the difference, both to the scientists like me and to the policymakers and understanding the extent of the crisis, is to have had better surveillance in place and more testing in place so we actually understood how much infection was in the country. i regret, i mean i did push fairly hard and i regret not pushing harder on the testing front. on the 23rd march, a week after scientists had warned

of 250,000 deaths, the government changed course. lockdown became compulsory. the prime minister has announced the most drastic limits to our lives that the uk has ever seen in living memory. as the uk hunkered down, coronavirus was already spreading amongst some of the country's most vulnerable, despite government promises to protect them. in the weeks before lockdown, the nhs had been freeing up space for a surge of covid—19 patients. people who were in hospital were sent back to care homes without any testing, and this meant that many of our care homes got the virus and we got a very large number of deaths. care home residents have accounted for almost a third of all uk covid—19 deaths. this is cramlington house in northumberland. panorama was here the week before lockdown. to maxine, lots of love

and happiness from tom. the owner, lucy craig, filmed for us inside. it's been such an emotionaljourney. it's been heart—breaking at times, it's been incredibly demanding. one of my homes had a covid outbreak, and that has gone right through the home. lucy did what she could to keep her residents safe. she stopped staff moving between homes and paid for taxis to get them to work. she also agreed with her local authority that anyone who might be positive was quarantined before being sent to her but still the virus got through. to be perfectly frank with you, we've had 53 positive residents in the home and we've had six covid deaths. and i've got people saying to me, "wow, those numbers are great." no, they're not, those numbers are horrendous for me personally. any death is a horrendous death.

so far, more than 115,000 people have lost their lives to coronavirus. some initial vaccine results are promising. for those who've already had the virus, it's too early to say what immunity they have and how long it will last. throughout the crisis, the government has said it did the right thing at the right time. but professor ferguson believes that had the government ordered lockdown just one week earlier, between 20,000 and 30,000 lives could have been saved. i mean, with the benefit of hindsight, clearly it would have been beneficial to lock down earlier. if you can imagine everything had happened a week earlier, that would have made a big difference. not only has the timing of lockdown

been a factor in the uk's death toll, it's had other consequences too. if we'd locked down a week earlier, we would have either been able to come down out of lockdown a lot sooner or, if we'd stayed in lockdown for the same length of time, to come out with far fewer cases. the key trade off here is between the health impacts of an epidemic and the economic costs and how you can manage things long—term. the challenge with suppression which we're experiencing at the moment is that you don't really have a long term exit strategy, you're stuck in the same policy until you really have a vaccine. the government says, "this is an unprecedented global pandemic". it says at every stage it's been "guided by the advice of experts from sage" and that its "response ensured the nhs was not overwhelmed" even at the peak of the virus, "so that everyone was always able to get the best possible care". order, order. the committee is now in session.

last week, the chief scientific adviser signalled that mistakes had been made and said sage urged government to lockdown a week earlier. it's clear that the outcome has not been good in the uk, i think we can absolutely clear about that. and there will be things, decisions made that will turn out not to have been the right decisions at the time, i'm sure about that as well. i'm incredibly worried that this winter will be rough and we might see a second wave and a second lockdown to control it. if you just look at the numbers, we have to learn from march and not repeat those mistakes. i don't think there's any perfect system and i think our system is actually very good at what it does but certainly i think some reflection needs to be given to how agile it is in decision making. there's no shame in admitting that the system made mistakes, this isn't about blaming individuals. this is about understanding why our system failed.

the government says there will be an independent inquiry into the coronavirus crisis. no date has yet been set. the government says it must remain focused on tackling the pandemic and saving lives. but there are calls for an inquiry now to help prepare us for what might come next.

a very warm welcome to bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. my name is mike embley. a change in tack as president trump brings his daily virus briefings back. he urges americans to socially distance and wear masks as deaths rise across the us. when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask, get a mask. whether you like the mask or not they have an impact, they'll have an effect, and we need everything we can get. british lawmakers criticise the government for not doing enough to tackle the threat from russia, as their report reveals the uk's one of moscow's top targets. around a dozen people are freed from an armed siege in the ukraine, after the president complies with a hostage taker‘s bizarre demand to promote an animal rights film.