Category Archives: Coronavirus

Sunak faces new questions at Covid inquiry after pranksters claim they reached his old phone number

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PM likely to be asked about WhatsApp messages from pandemic that he says are irretrievable, despite reports number accessed

Fresh questions are being raised over whether Rishi Sunak has handed over all relevant material to the Covid inquiry after reports that pranksters have been able to access an old phone number he used during his time as chancellor.

The prime minister will face a day of questioning at the inquiry on Monday, where he is expected to be questioned about his claims that scientists had too much power. He will also be asked detailed questions about the “eat out to help out” scheme that many experts believe allowed the virus to spread.

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Johnson at the Covid inquiry: behind a veil of responsibility, the finger of blame

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Rare moments of candour from the former prime minister did little to assuage the anger of bereaved families

Since being forced out of office last year, Boris Johnson will have had many moments to reflect on his time in Downing Street and to ponder what he might have done differently.

At the UK Covid-19 inquiry on Thursday, he shared one of those reflections, and – perhaps unsurprisingly, as it ultimately led to his downfall as prime minister – it concerned his handling of the Downing Street lockdown parties.

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No scientists attended meetings about eat out to help out scheme before it launched, Boris Johnson tells UK Covid inquiry – live

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Former PM says he ‘frankly assumed’ Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance had been involved in talks about scheme

Johnson has walked back claims that Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance were present to “properly discuss” the eat out to help out scheme before it went live, conceding that no scientists attended meetings about the scheme.

Johnson said he had “frankly assumed” they were involved in talks about the scheme with the Treasury and that he was “surprised it was smuggled past them”.

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Covid inquiry: Johnson surprised ‘eat out to help out’ not cleared by scientists

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Former PM also angrily denies comments he made about letting Covid ‘rip’ meant he had been uncaring

Boris Johnson assumed that Rishi Sunak’s flagship “eat out to help out” hospitality scheme had been cleared by government scientists and was surprised to learn later it was not, the former prime minister has told the inquiry into Covid.

In evidence that could pose notable difficulties for the prime minister when he appears before the inquiry on Monday, Johnson said it would have been “normal” for advisers such as Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance to have been briefed, and that he assumed this had been the case.

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Boris Johnson says he regrets questioning existence of long Covid and admits No 10 culture could be argumentative – UK politics live

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Former prime minister also admits he should have worked more closely with devolved administrations

Hugo Keith KC is questioning Johnson.

He asks if Johnson’s approach has been to give all relevant material to the inquiry.

I understand the feelings of these victims and their families and I am deeply sorry for the pain and the loss and suffering of those victims and their families.

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Is Boris Johnson right that UK had fewer Covid deaths than much of Europe?

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We fact check the assertion at the Covid inquiry that Britain was ‘well down the European table, and well down the world table’

Boris Johnson has questioned the assertion by the lead counsel in Britain’s Covid inquiry that Britain was among the worst performers in western Europe in terms of the number of excess deaths recorded during the pandemic.

The former prime minister told Hugo Keith KC on Wednesday that the UK was “well down the European table, and well down the world table”.

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Boris Johnson: I wasn’t properly warned about seriousness of Covid

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Ex-PM tells inquiry abusive messages between staff were inevitable passion of people ‘doing their best’ under great stress

Boris Johnson has insisted he was not properly warned about the potential seriousness of Covid during early 2020, as he dismissed abusive messages sent between his staff as the inevitable passion of people who were “doing their best”.

In a sometimes combative start to his evidence before the Covid inquiry in London, which began with protesters being removed from the hearing room, Johnson apologised for mistakes made, but then argued that these were not necessarily errors that could have been avoided.

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Boris Johnson considered ‘raid’ on vaccine plant in the Netherlands

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Covid inquiry expected to be told former PM was open to ‘military options’ to obtain ‘impounded’ jabs from factory in Leiden

Boris Johnson’s appearance before the Covid-19 inquiry is not until Wednesday but it is already making headlines in the Netherlands amid a mixture of amusement and alarm at claims he asked for British spies to plan a “raid” on a Dutch vaccine plant.

The operation – according to sources who briefed Johnson’s employer, the Daily Mail – would have taken place against the backdrop of a tit-for-tat row in March 2021 between the then prime minister and the EU, which was moving towards restricting exports of vaccines across the Channel.

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UK scores expected to fall in Pisa education study

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UK’s maths scores predicted to drop after a jump last time, with a less severe decline in English

UK scores in tests that compare educational attainment among 15-year-olds around the world are likely to fall when they are published this week, after the disruption that Covid caused to learning.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will publish the results of its latest programme for international student assessment (Pisa) on Tuesday, a year later than expected due to the pandemic.

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US prison deaths soared by 77% during height of Covid-19 crisis, study finds

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Analysis of in-custody deaths show mortality rates were more than three times the increase in general population in 2020

A study of US prison deaths at the height of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 has found that mortality rates soared by 77% relative to 2019, or more than three times the increase in the general population.

The study, published by Science Advances last week, is the most comprehensive analysis of in-custody deaths since 2020. The report found that “Covid-19 was the primary driver for increases in mortality due to natural causes; some states also experienced substantial increases due to unnatural causes.”

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We need resources to fight health impacts of climate crisis, Africans tell Cop28

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Continent must have more resilient health systems and local vaccine manufacturing to prevent next pandemic, says public health body

Africa’s leading public health body is using the first ever health day at Cop on 3 December to call for increased funding to fight the health impacts of the climate crisis on the continent and create more resilient systems to ensure it is prepared for the next pandemic.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) launched the second phase of its three-year, $1.5bn Saving Lives and Livelihoods drive this week, but its director general, Dr Jean Kaseya, said multiple disease outbreaks combined with the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and recovery from Covid means that much more financial support is needed.

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Boris Johnson’s legacy will be shaped by Covid inquiry appearance

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Discredited ex-PM faces a demolition job in one of the few policy areas to which he and his allies still cling

Even at the height of his popularity, Boris Johnson routinely avoided close questioning – to the extent of once hiding in a fridge to dodge a TV inquisitor. The former UK prime minister is likely to be dreading next week’s appearance at the Covid inquiry. And he probably should.

It is no exaggeration to say that events on Wednesday and Thursday at the inquiry’s repurposed office building in Paddington, west London, could help define the post-power image and legacy of Johnson, and very possibly not for the good.

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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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