Summary

  • England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty says the pandemic was "incredibly harrowing" for NHS staff, as he gives evidence to the Covid inquiry

  • Earlier, the inquiry heard emotional testimony from a former national clinical adviser Professor Kevin Fong - he broke down as he recalled visiting intensive care units in 2020

  • "We had nurses talking about patients ‘raining from the sky’," he said, adding that the "scale of death... was unlike anything they had ever seen before"

  • Press watch live above to follow the inquiry - we won't be publishing regular text updates

Live Reporting

  1. Pandemic 'incredibly harrowing' for NHS staff - Whitty

    Jim Reed
    Reporting from the inquiry

    Prof Chris Whitty tells the inquiry that without a lockdown in March 2020 the pressure on NHS hospitals would have been “substantially worse”.

    He describes the pandemic as the largest medical emergency since World War Two and says it was “unsurprising” some hospitals found it difficult to “escalate” treatment as they would do in normal times.

    The pandemic was “incredibly harrowing” for NHS staff, he says, "particularly in the first wave before vaccines became available".

  2. 'Scale of death was astounding... one team ran out of body bags'

    Jim Reed
    Reporting from the inquiry

    This post contains details some may find distressing

    Let's recap a little more from Prof Kevin Fong, who gave evidence just before Prof Chris Whitty.

    Prof Fong, who was the national clinical adviser for emergency preparedness for NHS England, said the “scale of death” was “very difficult to capture in the figures”.

    “The scale of death experienced by the intensive care teams during Covid was unlike anything they had ever seen before,” he said.

    “It was truly, truly astounding… We had nurses talking about patients ‘raining from the sky’, where one of the nurses told me they got tired of putting people in body bags.”

    “We went to another unit where things got so bad they were so short of resources, they ran out of body bags and instead stuck with nine-foot clear plastic sacks and cable ties.”

    “These are people who are used to seeing death but not on that scale and not like that.”

    He said that “despite the best efforts of everyone in the system” the surge of demand for healthcare caused by Covid meant it was “not possible to deliver the standard of care that would ordinarily be expected in a non-Covid period.”

    At the end of his evidence, he was thanked by the inquiry’s chair Baroness Hallett who said “it was obvious how distressing it was for you and reliving such an ordeal is never easy.”

  3. 'I'll never forget it': Harrowing testimony as doctor recalls intensive care visits

    Jim Reed
    Reporting from the inquiry

    Prof Chris Whitty is now giving evidence to the Covid inqury, which you can follow by pressing watch live above.

    Just before him, the inquiry heard harrowing testimony from Professor Kevin Fong, former national clinical adviser in emergency preparedness at NHS England.

    During the pandemic, Prof Fong, a consultant anaesthetist, conducted around 40 visits to intensive care units on behalf of NHS England to offer peer support to the doctors and nurses working there.

    He wrote reports which were sent back to managers including Prof Whitty - England’s chief medical officer.

    In emotional testimony to the inquiry, he repeatedly broke down while describing what he’d seen and his conversations with other staff members.

    “I was greeted at the entrance by one of the ICU registrars,” he said about his first visit in December 2020.

    “I asked him immediately what things had been like and… I’ll never forget, he replied it’s been like a terrorist attack every day since it started, and we don’t know when the attacks are going to stop.”

    He described Covid as the “biggest national emergency this country has faced since World War Two”.