Former chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies told the Covid inquiry that the way in which people died during the pandemic 'was harrowing and it remains horrible.'
Before we go, here's a summary of the key things we heard at the COVID inquiry today:
David Cameron's chancellor George Osborne admitted there was"no specific planning" for pandemics - or specifically lockdowns - in the Treasury as the Department of Health led on it and they, like everyone else, planned for flu; She was visibly moved as she apologised to the families of the COVID-bereaved and said she"did put some challenge to it" with a MERS exercise in 2016 after a visit to Asia;
Finally Professor Dame Sally Davies says that she"was very quiet about COVID" while many other people less qualified than her were"setting themselves up as experts on television" during the pandemic - when they weren't.She recalls writing an article about the government's COVID mistakes in The Daily Telegraph towards the end of 2020 - which triggered a backlash - and says"that taught me I shouldn't do it again".
Dame Sally said earlier she asked for a MERS virus exercise to be done after a trip from Asia where they had suffered an outbreak.It happened in February 2016 in London and was called Exercise Alice. But she refers to earlier comments about a lack of"public health resilience" - and says the UK didn't have that either.
"It was horrible, and I learned a lot about it from my daughter on the frontline as a young doctor in Scotland.Local public health directors' budgets cut with austerity
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