Saturday 11 June 2022 10:46 PM Jeremy Hunt faces fresh claims he is a 'lockdown fanatic' trends now
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Tory leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt last night faced fresh claims that he is a 'lockdown fanatic' who would have shut down the British economy in an attempt to emulate the draconian Chinese policy of zero Covid – trying to stop the virus spreading by taking the most extreme measures.
Mr Hunt – who mounted a botched bid to become Prime Minister ahead of last week's failed vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson – angrily denied supporting the Chinese approach when he was asked about it last month, with a source close to the former Health Secretary describing it as 'totally wrong, disproportionate and inhumane'.
However, The Mail on Sunday has obtained video footage of Mr Hunt arguing in July 2020 – six months after the pandemic reached the UK – in which he says that he 'very much' agrees 'that we should be aiming for zero infection and elimination of the disease' because the countries which adopted that approach 'have overwhelmingly been the most successful in tackling coronavirus'.
Mr Hunt cites the example of his sister, who lives in Beijing and flew back to the Chinese capital in the middle of lockdown: 'Just to give you an idea of the contrast, she was escorted from the airport to her home by ministry of health officials and then put into her home for two weeks' quarantine. The door was sealed and she had a police car sitting outside her house periodically.
'Now I'm not saying go that far in this country, but I just think it's an indication of how serious they are about stopping at the root every possible source of infection.'
Mr Hunt adds: 'I think the central problem we've got is that we adopted global best practice in test and trace, but at a point where we were getting about three-and-a-half thousand to 5,000 daily infections, whereas Korea,
