Covid inquiry prepares for first hearing after 220,000 deaths

More than three years after Boris Johnson announced a nationwide lockdown, the Covid investigation will cover every aspect of the UK’s pandemic response.

More than three years after the first lockdown began, two years after the last one ended, the public hearings are at last starting. Over the months that come the inquiry will have many questions to answer. Should we have locked down earlier? Should we have not locked down at all? Did we eat out to help restaurants out, or eat out to help the virus out? Could more have been done to protect care homes from infection? Should more have been done to protect residents from loneliness?

Baroness Hallett, the judge presiding, said her chief role is “to determine whether [the] level of loss,” in the broadest sense of the word, “was inevitable or whether things could have been done better”.

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Source: The Times, 13 June 2023