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Chris Whitty says there was a ‘complete absence of plans’ to deal with Covid

The Covid inquiry heard that it wasn’t until 25 February 2020 that a plan was commissioned by ministers

By Ruby Lott-Lavigna
Chris Whitty says there was a ‘complete absence of plans’ to deal with Covid
Chris Whitty told the Covid inquiry there was a ‘complete absence of plans’ to deal with the crisis. Matt Hancock, who was health secretary at the time, has repeatedly been accused of telling people there were plans in place | Tolga Akmen – WPA Pool/Getty Images
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There was a “complete absence of plans” to deal with Covid in the UK, chief medical officer Chris Whitty has said.

Speaking to the Covid inquiry today, Whitty said the government did not “have a plan that was going to be useful from a prevention or management point of view,” and that his view was that as a country we were “thin on the ground for plans”.

By the end of January 2020, Whitty realised there “was effectively a complete absence of plans to be able to deal with this particular crisis, this particular virus and this particular emerging pandemic”.

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