From 5h agoKey eventsnowClosing summary2h agoRishi Sunak say ‘climate politics is close to breaking point’3h agoLunchtime summary5h ago’Trangressions’ in personal life may have affected public’s confidence in Covid rules, Hancock accepts5h agoBoris Johnson was ‘not willing’ to go further over restrictions to ease spread of Covid in autumn 20206h agoMatt Hancock’s evidence to the Covid inquiry resumes7h agoMatt Hancock to give evidence for second day at Covid inquiryFilters BETAKey events (7)Matt Hancock (15)Rishi Sunak (11)Boris Johnson (5)Simon Case (5)Hugo Keith (3)now11.00 ESTClosing summary
Here is a round-up of the day’s events:
Messages sent by Matt Hancock said that Rishi Sunak would have put “enormous pressure” on Boris Johnson not to have an autumn lockdown in 2020 in what would have meant not enough was being done to halt the spread of coronavirus, the Covid-19 inquiry has heard. The accusation was contained in a WhatsApp message which Hancock, then the health secretary, sent at a time when ministers and advisers were discussing the need for a second national lockdown. Hancock had been pressing Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, for information about a meeting on 30 October that he claims he was “blocked” from attending.
The former prime minister Boris Johnson was “not willing” to go further in terms of national restrictions to ease the spread of Covid in the autumn of 2020. The UK Covid inquiry heard the former health secretary Matt Hancock was pushing for more stringent measures to curb the spread of the virus in September and October of that year.
Hancock has accepted that “transgressions” in his personal life may have affected the public’s confidence in rules put in place to stop the spread of Covid. Hancock resigned as health secretary in June 2021 after footage emerged of him kissing his aide Gina Coladangelo, which broke social distancing guidelines.
If the government had acted more swiftly in the autumn of 2020 school closures could have been avoided in January 2021, the UK Covid inquiry has heard. Hancock said that “on reflection and with hindsight” he thought “if we’d have taken action sooner, in September of 2020, then we might, for instance, have avoided the need to close schools, which in the end we had to as cases were so high by January”.
Hancock told the UK Covid inquiry that “every decision was a choice between difficult options”, as he discussed the decision to discharge hospital patients to care homes. He said that leaving patients in hospital would have made them “more likely to have caught Covid because of the risks of nosocomial infection”, adding that “it was rational and reasonable to make sure that they were in the safest place that they could be”.
The former first minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon would communicate with the public “in a way that was unhelpful and confusing”, according to Hancock. The Covid inquiry was shown WhatsApp messages from…
2023-12-01 10:42:49
Article from www.theguardian.com
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