The true scale of the threat from the incoming Covid pandemic was withheld from the prime minister and the public in early February 2020, evidence to the Covid inquiry has suggested.
Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, told a No 10 aides’ WhatsApp group on 6 February 2020 that he had just been told by Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, that the virus was “probably out of control now and will sweep the world”.
However, a day earlier, ministers and advisers at a meeting of the government’s emergency committee, Cobra, were told that it was still believed the virus could be contained within China, and this would be a “key part of preventing the spread of the outbreak to the UK”.
And three weeks later, on 25 February 2020, chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick gave a briefing to journalists in which Professor Whitty said that data from China suggested it was still possible to contain the virus. He added: “We’ve always taken the view that this may either be containable or it may not.”
It would not be until 23 March 2020 that the UK would go into national lockdown.
Mr Cummings told Lady Hallett’s inquiry that Whitehall was “not in emergency mode” at the time and that the “system” did not really expect the country would be in “the biggest crisis the country had seen since 1945” in just a month’s time.
But Hugo Keith KC, the lead counsel to the inquiry, asked Mr Cummings why he did not tell the prime minister what Sir Patrick had told him, and that the strategy of containing the virus had failed.
Mr Cummings insisted that he did pass this onto Mr Johnson – but Mr Keith pointed out that this is not recorded in any emails, WhatsApps or other documents from the time.
On 17 February, the modelling sub-committee of Sage, the committee of scientific advisers, warned that there might now be sustained transmission of the virus, and on 21 February Lombardy in northern Italy imposed a lockdown after a serious outbreak there.
Yet on 23 February, the Department of Health recorded just 13 cases in the UK, the inquiry heard.
There were no Cobra meetings between 18 and 26 February 2020, despite the crisis becoming more apparent. Mr Cummings insisted that the view in government was more “if this is really going to happen, it’s not going to happen for months”.
Mr Keith asked why the message Mr Cummings had sent on 6 February about the virus “sweeping the world” was not communicated to the then prime minister.
Mr Cummings said the “general view” in the Department of Health and Cabinet Office in early to mid-February was that the threat of the virus was all still “murky and in the future – they weren’t ringing alarm bells at this point, far from it, they go skiing”.
Mr Keith said: “Why weren’t you [ringing alarm bells] though, Mr Cummings? You are the one who has spoken to the chief scientist… Why did you. as his [the PM’s] chief adviser, not tell him, ‘My information is containment has failed. The virus is coming.’?”
Mr Cummings replied: “Well, I did tell him that… the fact that things are not written down doesn’t mean that they weren’t communicated.”
Later in February, after spending time at Chequers for half term, WhatsApps suggest that Mr Johnson had finally got a grip on the seriousness of the crisis.
On 28 February, Mr Johnson said Covid was “very likely to be the defining event of the year”, while on 29 February, he said: “Frankly there is no limit to the stuff I am willing to show we are gripping this.”
Mr Cummings told the inquiry that his view by early March was: “I’ve got an appalling feeling that I’m in one of those historic catastrophes, like July 1914.”
He added that inside No 10 he was “suddenly overhearing people having phone calls about whether local authorities could book out ice rinks and get trunks to carry massive numbers of bodies and store them in ice rinks”. He described it as a “growing cascade” of nightmares as they realised the system was “out of control”.
On 12 March, amid a debate inside government about whether suppression or lockdown was now needed, Mr Cummings sent a message to a No 10 WhatsApp group saying: “The overwhelming danger here is being late and the NHS implodes like zombie apocalypse film – not being a week early.”
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