UK was too slow to react to the coronavirus outbreak, top professor says

LONDON, April 17 (Reuters) - The United Kingdom was too slow to react on a number of fronts to the novel coronavirus outbreak, a leading public health professor told a parliamentary committee on Friday.

"Where were the system errors that led us to have probably the highest death rates in Europe?," Anthony Costello, professor of International Child Health and Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health, told the Health and Social Care Committee.

"And we have to face the reality of that: We were too slow with a number of things. But we can make sure in the second wave we are not too slow."

Donna Kinnair, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, told the committee that there was still an issue over testing front line health professionals in Britain. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Elizabeth Piper, editing by Paul Sandle)