Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has apologised for the mistakes his government made in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, The National News reports.
At the UK Covid-19 Inquiry in west London on Wednesday, Mr Johnson said he was “deeply sorry for the pain, loss and suffering” of those who lost loved ones.
However, his speech was interrupted by four people who were removed from the hearing room after holding up signs that read:
“The dead can’t hear your apologies.”
Mr Johnson said in his opening remarks:
“I do hope this inquiry will get the answers to the difficult questions.”
The Department of Health estimates that 230,000 people have died from Covid in Britain since the outbreak in early 2020. Mr Johnson said there were undoubtedly things he could have done differently when leading the fight against the pandemic, but he insisted “we did the best we could” in “very difficult” circumstances. He also admitted his government had made mistakes, saying:
“So many people suffered, so many people lost their lives. Inevitably, in the course of trying to handle a very, very difficult pandemic in which we had to balance appalling harms on either side of the decision, we may have made mistakes.”
Among the decisions he is responsible for are the speed of the government’s response to the pandemic in 2020, lockdown decisions and their timeliness, the virus explosion in the residential care sector, the Eat Out to Help Out scheme and the decision not to introduce a circuit breaker later in 2020, he confirmed. Mr Johnson also said:
“I take personal responsibility for all the decisions that we made.”
He said the government did not fully believe some of the predictions that were made in the early stages of the pandemic and said “we have to put our hands up” and admit that they failed to realise the consequences. He added:
“I don’t think we attached enough credence to those forecasts, and because of the experience that we’d had with other zoonotic diseases, I think collectively in Whitehall there was not a sufficiently loud enough klaxon of alarm.”
Repeatedly asked why the UK had such a high death rate – second in Europe after Italy – he cited unfavourable factors including an “extremely elderly population” with multiple health problems and a “very densely populated country” which “didn’t help”. The only simple solution during the pandemic was to distribute vaccines, Mr Johnson said.
