Enough was known about coronavirus in January to act straight away, but the response was delayed, a leading scientist has said.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said that while information about the virus was "uncertain", action could have been taken.
At the start of January the World Health Organisation was aware of a cluster of pneumonia cases - with no deaths - in Wuhan, China, and shared detailed information with member states.
Speaking at the Imperial College London's Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics's (J-IDEA) symposium on a post-Covid world, Sir Jeremy said the response to the information was delayed.