A team of professionals charged with engaging with the COVID-19 Inquiry on behalf of tens of thousands of healthcare workers is asking whether taxpayers’ money has been misdirected in order to cover up for mistakes and bad decisions which were made in the early days of the pandemic and led to hundreds of avoidable deaths and untold suffering through Long Covid.
Mistakes which have not been corrected to this day.
The COVID-19 Airborne Transmission Alliance is a group set up to create a collective voice for scientists, professionals and academics highlighting that the NHS refused (and continues to refuse) to accept that COVID-19 is transmitted through an airborne route.
The refusal of Government to acknowledge this fact has been the basis of the denial of protection for healthcare workers, including adequate ventilation of healthcare premises and sustainable and effective respiratory protective equipment (PPE).
Unlike the Inquiry which has cost millions of pounds on legal advice and collating evidence, CATA, which has no funding or resources, has managed through the use of freedom of information requests to identify that the Government and other bodies failed to disclose critical evidence which gave rise to incomplete and misleading accounts of critical decisions to the Inquiry.
“Either public bodies need to learn basic skills on how to search emails and electronic filing systems, or there has been a systematic attempt to rewrite life and death decisions by editing electronic exchanges and forgetting to share critical meeting notes with the Inquiry,” says Professor Kevin Bampton, Chair of the Council for Work and Health.
“We can’t believe it is coincidental that the accounts given to the Inquiry and the evidence supporting them are missing critical messages and exchanges.”
CATA has undertaken a painstaking analysis of two decisive matters relating to the way in which COVID-19 is spread. The first was the decision to declassify COVID-19 as a High Consequence Infectious Disease in March 2020, associated with an inappropriate downgrading of respiratory protection for most healthcare workers at the COVID front line. The second relates to the conduct of the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Cell, which dictated the implementation of safety for healthcare workers.
David Osborn, a health and safety professional who has worked for five years on a voluntary basis for CATA, explains what the Freedom of Information Requests reveal.
“From the Module 3 hearings, we could see that there were inexplicable gaps in the evidence. In some cases, the Inquiry lawyers seemed to see them too. These were about crucial decisions. For example, the IPC Cell wasn’t set up to make scientific decisions, but to take advice from specialist bodies. However, experts from Public Health England and the Health and Safety Executive gave clear advice which contradicted the views of the IPC Cell. We have evidence from correspondence that advice was ignored and removed from the record and not disclosed to the inquiry. “
“These are not academic issues, or something from history. We now understand that COVID-19 is a much more insidious disease than ‘flu and should not have been treated then or since in the same way. It causes long-term neurological damage, disability and is not stopped by vaccines. It is also costing the NHS millions,” says Dr Barry Jones, Chair of CATA.
The Inquiry has cost £200m, half of which has been on public body evidence responses. CATA has a mixed view on whether it was worth it.
“The Inquiry has made excellent provision for allowing people to tell their stories of those dark days. Many have been harrowing and moving, shining a light on the personal suffering and sacrifice of many. However, state players who have given evidence have not convinced us that they have given the whole 'story' or indeed the whole truth. While the Inquiry has been important to raise issues in the public consciousness, it seems to have done little to prick the public conscience.
"We despair when we read that the current NHS pandemic strategy says, '“it will not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic virus, and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so.' Clearly, nothing has been learned by the NHS, but hopelessness.”
CATA will be publishing its assessment of the Inquiry’s Module 3 report once the Inquiry has published on 19 March.
Full press release attached.
2026-03-13 CATA Press Release (1).pdf
Further reading on the hub:
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