In a difficult day for the government at the latest Covid inquiry hearing, the British Medical Association criticised its decision to abandon contact tracing, its “hopelessly inadequate” supply of PPE, and its failed messaging around Eat Out to Help Out and working from home.
BMA lawyer Brian Stanton said the decision to stop tracking Covid transmissions, made in March 2020, weeks before the first lockdown, left the UK “without any effective measures for controlling the pandemic” and “likely fuelled” the number of deaths.
“This decision was ostensibly because the UK was moving from the ‘contain’ to the ‘delay’ stage of the pandemic,” Stanton told the hearing, adding that it later emerged that a lack of testing capacity was also partly responsible.
