Five howlers from Jenny Harries

It’s just two days to go until the New Year’s Honours List is announced and already speculation is rife as to who the lucky names will be. Tennis teen Emma Raducanu is set to become the youngest MBE recipient ever while outgoing 007 Daniel Craig should get a gong for his many years of fictitious sacrifice on Her Majesty’s secret service. And in light of the ongoing pandemic, it’s no surprise that the list is set to be stuffed full of NHS heroes being recognised for their work, with Chris Whitty among those tipped for a knighthood. The Lancelot of the lancet, if you will.

But one name unlikely to be on the list will be that of Dr Jenny Harries. The health chief has had a torrid time during Covid while conversely boasting more lives than Lazarus, having fallen upwards mid-pandemic from being England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer to her current post as chief exec of the UK Health Security Agency. For throughout the past twenty months, Harries has come to embody many of the worst aspects of Britain’s well-meaning yet under-performing bio-security state. 

Perhaps that can only be expected from someone who made their name in a £142,000-a-year role at Public Health England – an agency which proved much keener on lobbying for sugar taxes than actually preventing a pandemic. But it does beg the question as to why Tory ministers keep promoting her, given the growing charge-sheet against Harries. Below are just five examples of her howlers throughout Britain’s Covid nightmare:

1) Backed large events going ahead

At the beginning of the pandemic, as one Covid-hit country after another went into lockdown, Harries starred in an ill-judged video on 11 March 2020 with Boris Johnson, explaining why large-scale events like the Cheltenham races would not be cancelled. According to Harries: ‘Big gatherings are not seen to be something which is going to have a big effect so we don’t want to disrupt people’s lives. Whoops! Harries also went on BBC Breakfast to claim that cancelling big outdoor events like football matches would not necessarily be a decision supported by science, adding breezily that most people who get the virus will just ‘feel a bit rough.’ How did that one turn out?

2) Ridiculed mask-wearing, only to U-turn

In the early stages of Covid, Harries was one of the scientific faces who shot to fame with her regular appearances on the media and at press conferences. But such stardom didn’t last long thanks to her habit of making unfortunate and ill-judged remarks. Among these include her claims in March 2020 that you could be more at risk from contracting Covid by wearing face masks as they could ‘actually trap the virus’ and cause the person wearing it to breathe it in. She told BBC News that ‘for the average member of the public walking down a street, it is not a good idea’ to wear a face mask in the hope of preventing infection. 

Four months later and such coverings were mandatory in shops, supermarkets and on public transport. In August, Harries quietly backtracked on her comments by claiming the evidence is ‘not very strong in either direction’ that masks prevent transmission – despite previously saying they would increase it. Her early comments also focused on hand-washing, not ventilation, misleading the public about how the virus spreads.

3) Argued against testing, now runs Test and Trace

Among Harries’ early failings was downplaying the role Covid testing would have in fighting the virus. On 5 March, she told Parliament that there would soon come a point when testing is no longer necessary, foreshadowing the plan to give up on preventing Covid from spreading. On 12 March, as cases of the virus soared, the government announced it would stop all community testing and focus instead on testing people in hospitals and protecting health workers as it moved from the ‘contain’ phase to the ‘delay’ phase. Harries defended this move, scoffing that mass test and trace was ‘not an appropriate mechanism.’

On 26 March 2020 she told a No. 10 press conference that the World Health Organisation’s advice to ‘test, test, test’ was an unnecessary measure as ‘We need to realise that the clue with the WHO is in its title – it’s a World Health Organization.’ She continued: ‘It is addressing all countries across the world, with entirely different health infrastructures … We have an extremely well-developed public health system in this country.’ Want to bet? A month on and she was still arguing on 20 April the UK testing policy had been correct – despite the government opting to belatedly ramp up testing capacity. 

The following day she denied the link between Germany’s superior testing system and fewer deaths, despite Germany boasting substantially fewer deaths in the first wave of the virus. A fortnight later, on 5 May 2020, she told the Commons Health Select Committee that shortages were the reason for stopping testing – contradicting her earlier claims that testing would not be the UK’s pandemic strategy. The icing on the cake? In April this year she replaced Dido Harding as the new head of NHS Test and Trace. She’d previously claimed that people will be able to tell the difference between a legitimate call from Test and Trace, and a scammer, because the legitimate call will sound more ‘professional’ – whatever that means. Trebles all round!

4) Dismissed PPE shortages

A month into the pandemic and Harries had managed to make a name for herself – for all the wrong reasons. Having claimed in March 2020 that the UK has a ‘perfectly adequate supply of PPE,’ in April she doubled-down on dismissing widely-reported shortages in NHS hospitals. The Deputy CMO instead praised the UK’s coronavirus preparation as ‘exemplar,’ suggesting that the conversation could be ‘more adult’ when discussing PPE supplies – something which went down badly with those on the frontline. It took until April 2021 for her to admit ‘we were not fully prepared for this pandemic.’

5) Omicron episode errors

A year on and Harries is still causing headlines, having apparently switched from underestimating the dangers of Covid to now overestimating the potency of the Omicron variant. December 2021 has been something of a nightmare month for the good doctor. It began with a humiliating rebuke by No. 10 after she urged people to avoid socialising ‘unless you need to’ in the run up to Christmas. Boris Johnson insisted ‘we’re not going to change the overall guidance, we don’t think that’s necessary’ while his spokesman claimed ‘Jenny Harries provides advice to the government, she is not a government minister. The public should follow the guidance as set out by the government.’

A fortnight later she then told a parliamentary committee on 15 December that Omicron was ‘probably the most significant threat we’ve had since the start of the pandemic’ – a pretty strong claim, given that Delta killed thousands across the globe. Indeed, Harries’ assertion has (thus far) not proven to be borne out by events, with her own agency admitting on 23 December that people infected with the variant were between 50 and 70 per cent less likely to be admitted to hospital than with Delta. Asked about the evidence by the BBC the following day, Harries would only claim there was a ‘a glimmer of Christmas hope in the findings’ but that it was still too early to downgrade the variant’s threat level.

Two days later and she found herself on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph, accused of using ‘dodgy data’ to push for tighter Covid restrictions. It is claimed the health chief disseminated misleading statistics on hospitalisations that overstated the risk from Omicron, with the paper reporting she was the source of a contested claim by Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, that there is typically a 17-day lag between patients becoming infected and requiring hospitalisation. This is despite official Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, which suggested an average delay of nine or 10 days.

Given Harries’ track record, what’s the betting she’s called this one wrong again?