Category Archives: Coronavirus

Earlier lockdown could have saved lives of 30,000, Hancock tells Covid inquiry

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Ex-health secretary has described Boris Johnson’s Downing Street as undermined by ‘culture of fear’

Tens of thousands of lives could have been saved if the UK had locked down three weeks earlier, Matt Hancock has told the Covid inquiry, as he described the operation of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street as undermined by a “culture of fear”.

The former health secretary said his staff were abused by Dominic Cummings and that Johnson’s then chief adviser attempted to exclude ministers and even Johnson himself from key decisions at the start of the pandemic, hampering the government’s response.

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Matt Hancock ‘was not told about eat out to help out scheme until day it was announced’ – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

Hancock is now deploying the defence previewed in the Observer on Sunday. (See 9.58am.)

He says from the middle of January the DHSC was “trying to effectively raise the alarm”. He says:

We were trying to wake up Whitehall to the scale of the problem and this wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be addressed only from the health department. Non-pharmaceutical interventions cannot be put in place by a health department. A health department can’t shut schools. It should have been grasped and led from the centre of government earlier. And you’ve seen evidence that repeatedly the department and I tried to make this happen.

And we were on occasions blocked, and at other times our concerns were not taken as seriously as they should have been until the very end of February.

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Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer clash over immigration and Parthenon marbles at PMQs – UK politics live

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Prime minister’s record shows he has the ‘reverse Midas touch’, Keir Starmer says

Back at the home affairs committee, Tim Loughton (Con) has just had another go at getting answers about the number of asylum applications that have been withdrawn. (See 10.38am.)

He said, when he said earlier 95% of withdrawn applications were categorised as withdrawn for “other” reasons (and not because the claims were not substantiated), he was quoting figures for the last quarter.

Whilst the prospect is perhaps what none of us would wish to plan for, I believe the reality will be that we will need to discharge Covid-19 positive patients into residential care settings for the reason you have noted.

This will be entirely clinically appropriate because the NHS will triage those to retain in acute settings who can benefit from that sector’s care.

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Andy Burnham claims government note shows Covid tier 3 restrictions imposed on Manchester as ‘punishment beating’ – as it happened

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Covid tier system introduced in October 2020 and imposed different restrictions on English regions in effort to contain spread of virus. This live blog is closed

At the Covid inquiry Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said that he was not getting information from the government in February about Covid. He said he was “disappointed” by that.

In late February and early March he was getting information from other cities around the world instead, he said. He said this happened even though his foreign affairs team consisted of just three people.

The government generally does give us information about a variety of things happening. I’m disappointed the government weren’t giving us information in February about what they knew then.

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Respiratory infection clusters in China not caused by novel virus, says health ministry

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Data has been supplied to World Health Organization and China says flu and other known pathogens are culprits

A surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a novel virus, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday.

Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by an overlap of common viruses such as the influenza virus, rhinoviruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and adenovirus, as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a common culprit for respiratory tract infections, a National Health Commission spokesperson said.

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Judge suggests Revenue NSW ‘not following the law’ on homeless woman Covid fine

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Exclusive: State government has admitted 33,000 Covid fines were invalid but questions remain about additional 29,000 fines issued during pandemic

A New South Wales supreme court judge considering a challenge to a $3,000 Covid fine imposed on a homeless woman has suggested the state’s fines body was “not following the law” as declared in a previous ruling that saw more than 33,000 Covid penalties scrapped.

A year ago, a decision by justice Dina Yehia prompted the state government to withdraw tens of thousands of fines after they were found to have been issued unlawfully because they did not provide enough detail about the offence.

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China supplies data to WHO about clusters of respiratory illness

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Epidemiologists say wave in north, particularly among children, may be partly caused by ‘immunity debt’

Chinese health authorities have provided the requested data on an increase in respiratory illnesses and reported clusters of pneumonia in children, and have not detected any unusual or novel pathogens, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

The WHO had asked China for more information on Wednesday after groups including the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases reported clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in north China.

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School leaders in England feel lockdown ‘broke spell’ of bond with parents

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Education experts agree with Ofsted chief that many parents now disregard rules previously taken for granted

Lockdown “broke the spell” that bound parents and schools together, according to school leaders and experts who have endorsed the Ofsted chief’s view that many parents now disregard rules on behaviour and attendance they once took for granted.

Delivering her last annual report as chief inspector of schools in England, Amanda Spielman said: “The social contract between parents and schools has been fractured by lockdowns and closures.” And she warned: “That social contract took years to build and consolidate and it will take time to restore.”

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Whitty implored officials not to use terms like ‘flatten curve’, Covid inquiry told

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England’s chief medical officer says incomplete knowledge of epidemiological concepts can be ‘dangerous thing’

Sir Chris Whitty spent early parts of the Covid pandemic trying to “implore” people in government not to publicly discuss health concepts they did not fully understand such as “flattening the curve” of infections and herd immunity, he said.

Giving evidence to the inquiry into Covid, Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, said he did this after realising that incomplete knowledge could be “a dangerous thing”.

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Chris Whitty says No 10 decision-making ‘chaotic’ under Boris Johnson but other countries were similar – UK Covid inquiry live

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Chief medical officer for England and chief UK medical adviser says civil servants did good job but PM took ‘unique’ decisions

Q: Was there no aspect on the pandemic on which you did not advise?

Whitty says he would not put it like that. He says he felt it important to advise on issues where advice from a scientist or doctor would be useful.

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Boris Johnson ‘bamboozled’ by science and Matt Hancock had habit of saying things that were untrue, UK Covid inquiry hears – live

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Former chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance revealed there was ‘complete lack of leadership’ at times in crisis

Vallance says that some of what he was doing during Covid would have been done by anyone else in the post of government chief scientific adviser (GCSA).

But he says because of his medical training, and his knowledge of vaccines (he had worked for GlaxoSmithKline before taking the GCSA job), he was probably more involved than another GCSA might have been.

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What we learned from Patrick Vallance at the Covid inquiry

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Chief scientific adviser in pandemic says lockdown should have come sooner and that Johnson is not great at science

Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser throughout Covid, has been giving evidence to the inquiry into the pandemic on Monday. Here is what we have learned so far.

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Patrick Vallance contradicts Rishi Sunak’s evidence to Covid inquiry

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PM would almost certainly have known concerns over ‘eat out to help out’ scheme, says former chief scientific adviser

Rishi Sunak would almost certainly have known scientists were worried about his “eat out to help out” scheme during the pandemic, Sir Patrick Vallance has said, directly contradicting the prime minister’s evidence to the Covid inquiry.

In potentially damaging testimony, Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser during the pandemic, said he would be “very surprised” if Sunak had not learned about objections to his plan to help the hospitality industry.

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Rishi Sunak says pro-Palestine march on Saturday is ‘proof of UK’s commitment to freedom’ – as it happened

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Prime minister says he finds prospect of march ‘disrespectful’ but says freedom includes ‘right to peacefully protest’

Keith is only now asking about Covid. All the questions so far have been about process.

Sedwill says, when concerns about Covid arose, he did not agree to a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee taking place immediately. He wanted to ensure that the meeting was prepared for. And he was concerned that having a Cobra meeting might alarm people.

I felt that a Cobra which might have been convened primarily for communications purposes wasn’t wise. Two days later I was advised there was a genuine cross-government basis for it and I agreed.

May we be plain please as to what you mean by communications purposes. Were you concerned that the Cobra was being called by the DHSC [the Department of Health and Social Care] for presentation purposes, that is to say to make a splash about the role of DHSC, perhaps its secretary of state [Matt Hancock], and that’s why you initially hesitated.

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Australia news live: Optus network outage ‘root cause’ unclear as services slowly return; NAB lifts variable home loan rate after RBA hike

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Victoria’s Northern Health phone lines affected by Optus outage

Northern Health in Melbourne said all phone lines into its campuses are affected by the current Optus outage.

This includes phone lines into Northern hospital Epping, Broadmeadows hospital, Bundoora Centre, Craigieburn Centre, Kilmore district hospital, and [the] Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (VVED).

We apologise for any inconvenience.

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Australia’s Covid inquiry must not morph into chance to ‘retell history’, health experts warn

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‘We should remember how many lives were saved … but we need to learn and do better,’ former AMA chief says

Key medical figures at the forefront of Australia’s Covid response have urged the federal inquiry into the virus to deeply investigate how governments set policies on vaccines, border closures and hospital preparations.

Dr Nick Coatsworth, Australia’s former deputy chief medical officer, said an examination of vaccine safety reporting was important for public confidence in the future. Dr Omar Khorshid, a former president of the Australian Medical Association, said the health response to Covid should be seen as a “national triumph” and the federal government’s independent inquiry must not morph into an opportunity to “retell history”.

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Keir Starmer dismisses king’s speech as ‘exercise in economic miserabilism’ – politics live

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Labour party leader criticises speech as ‘admission that government has no faith in Britain’s ability to avert decline’

Here is Ben Quinn’s guide to what will be in the king’s speech.

In a statement about the king’s speech issued overnight, Keir Starmer said:

Britain is crying out for the long-term change that harnesses the ambition of our young people, the innovative drive of our businesses, and the ordinary hope and optimism that exists around every kitchen table.

A government acting in the national interest would deliver a big build programme to kickstart growth in every region and begin to turn around 13 years of decline with a plan for a decade of national renewal.

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Australia rejected millions of face masks provided by PPE Medpro suppliers

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Exclusive: Suppliers for firm linked to UK peer Michelle Mone helped source Covid masks for Australian government that were found unusable

Suppliers of PPE for a company linked to the Conservative peer Michelle Mone were also involved during the Covid pandemic in supplying millions of face masks to the Australian government that were rejected over safety concerns.

Australia’s Department of Health and Aged Care told the Guardian that of 50m face masks supplied to fulfil a government contract awarded to a small online retailer, Australian Business Mobiles (ABM), the overwhelming majority – 45.7m – were deemed unusable for its health service. A department spokesperson said five of seven manufacturers that supplied the masks were “deemed non-compliant with quality regulations”.

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Covid inquiry: Hancock ‘wanted to decide who should live or die’ if NHS overwhelmed

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‘Fortunately this horrible dilemma never crystallised,’ former NHS England head Simon Stevens tells inquiry

Former health secretary Matt Hancock told officials that he – rather than the medical profession – “should ultimately decide who should live or die” if the NHS was overwhelmed during the pandemic, the Covid inquiry heard.

“Fortunately this horrible dilemma never crystalised,” the former head of the NHS, Lord Simon Stevens, said in his evidence to the inquiry on Thursday.

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Cobra meetings on Covid were not ‘optimally effective’, former head of NHS England tells inquiry – UK politics live

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Simon Stevens says the meetings were large and sometimes ministers there did not have full authority

O’Connor asks Stevens if people tried to force him out of his job during Covid.

Stevens says that is not what people were saying to him at the time.

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