Health workers tell the UK's Covid-19 inquiry there was a lack of support at the start of the pandemic
In a video shown to the inquiry, one GP says she was going to work exposed to Covid "every day... but we had nothing. There was no support at all"
A consultant says he and others felt "very vulnerable" as the pandemic spread
A new phase of the inquiry, examining the impact on patients, healthcare workers and the wider NHS, began this morning
Poet Michael Rosen recalled his Covid treatment - saying he was given a 50-50 chance of survival in intensive care
Watch the inquiry live by pressing watch live at the top of the page
The inquiry is back after a lunch break. Stay with us as we bring you the latest news lines and analysis.
You can watch the live coverage from the inquiry by clicking the play button above.
Jim Reed
Reporting from the inquiry
The first day of each section of the inquiry is important as lawyers begin to set out the angles they are taking and the broad questions that will need answering.
We got a sense of that this morning from Jacqueline Carey KC, the new counsel to the inquiry.
In the weeks to come, she’s likely to be the person putting questions to the likes of former health secretary Matt Hancock and England’s chief medical officer Prof Sir Chris Whitty.
“We all heard the message, ‘Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives’”, she said in her introductory remarks.
“But did we [do that]? And, just as importantly, why did we need to protect the NHS [in the first place] and at what cost?”
A picture will be painted, she added, of a “healthcare system that was creaking at the seams” with “not enough staff”, compounded by absences caused by sickness and shielding.
Expect to hear much more about that, along with the availability of PPE and masks, and infection control procedures, given that tens of thousands of NHS patients caught Covid not in the community but in hospital itself after being admitted for another reason.
'He didn't die of Covid, he died because he couldn't be seen'
This phase of the inquiry will focus not just on people who died after catching Covid, but on people who suffered when the outbreak upended the everyday function of the NHS.
In another clip from the video played at the start of today's hearings, Carole Anne shares a story about her partner, Craig, who died of a brain aneurism during the pandemic.
Craig was unable to get an appointment due to new triage rules and fears around catching Covid in hospital, she says.
When he died, the hospital consultant told her: "Craig didn't die of Covid, he died as a result of Covid because he couldn't get seen."
The inquiry is breaking for lunch now and will resume at 13:50 BST.
We'll be wrapping up the key lines here in the meantime, so stay with us.
As we reported earlier, the inquiry opened with a video showing patients, bereaved loved ones and healthcare staff discussing their experience with Covid.
Doctors, paramedics and pharmacists described having "no support at all" at the start of the outbreak. Watch more below:
NHS staff on Covid: 'There was no support at all'
Carey is now moving on to discuss the pressures on GPs during the pandemic, explaining that there wasn't enough to meet demand.
The number of GP appointments in March 2020 surged, she says, and GPs shared concerns over having consultations with their patients over the phone instead of face-to-face.
One GP nurse told the inquiry she had as many as 20 different guidelines to read daily, often having to focus more time on reviewing them instead of treating patients.
Pharmacies will be another focus point for this module, Carey says, with some pharmacy professionals reporting that they felt overlooked.
Carey says 999 and 111 services will also be considered by the inquiry, as paramedics and call handlers had to adapt to a surge of calls as well as sickness amongst staff.
Carey turns to the different types of personal protective equipment (PPE) available at the start of the pandemic and how effective it was.
She holds up an example of the blue surgical masks that many of us will have worn, describing its role in protection from droplets, and pointing out that it does not fit the face.
She then holds up one of the white, tighter fitting masks designed for protection from aerosols. These need to be fit tested by trained staff, and the inquiry hears of one hospital that avoided such fit tests to avoid being overwhelmed during the height of the pandemic.
Carey then turns to the classification of Covid and the impact of how the disease was managed.
Its classification was downgraded between January and March 2020 because mortality rates were considered to be low, she says, which saw Covid being managed the same as other contagious diseases, like the flu.
Image source, UK Covid-19 InquiryCarey now tells the inquiry that there is a need to understand some basics about how Covid is transmitted and methods that were used to try and stop infections.
She highlights that there "was and perhaps remains" a "lack of scientific consensus" about the transmission of Covid-19.
Carey adds that anything she says or experts say "cannot be taken as gospel" as it's not "the only view".
She then goes through several ways in which Covid is transmitted.
Nick Triggle
Health correspondent
From the opening statement by Carey, it’s clear this module on healthcare is both about what happened before Covid hit as well as after.
She has said one of the key questions that will need to be answered is why the NHS needed to be protected – she started off by quoting the words of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who told the nation “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives” as the nation entered lockdown in March 2020.
Going into the pandemic, the NHS was in its weakest state for a generation. Waiting times over the winter of 2019-2020 had dropped to what was then record-high levels, at least since the introduction of modern targets in the early 2000s.
Funding had been squeezed – with budget rises of between 1 to 2% a year above inflation over the previous decade.
It meant occupancy levels were well above the recommended 85% threshold for safety and efficiency.
This was a major factor in the decision to stop routine treatments, such as knee and hip operations, en masse. That led to a sharp rise in the number of people waiting for these – something the NHS is still grappling with today.
Jim Reed
Reporting from the inquiry
Jacqueline Carey KC, counsel to the inquiry, has been setting out in some detail the kind of evidence we can expect to hear over the next 10 weeks.
She began by reading out the anonymous testimony of some hospital workers who have spoken to the inquiry.
One hospital porter said it was “horrible” that some Covid patients were left alone in intensive care as relatives were unable to visit.
“You could see it in their eyes… at the height of the pandemic it was horrible place to be,” they said. “So many people died on their own or with only one family member around them.
Another hospital worker spoke about cleaning the room of a Covid patient who must have been “only 24, 25” years old.
They said the patient told them: “I thought Covid-19 wasn’t a real thing but it’s killing me.”
The cleaner broke down in tears when they were telling that account to researchers.
Carey reads out some accounts from Every Story Matters - an online tool that allows the public to submit their stories from the pandemic to the inquiry.
She says it's not possible or practical for her to reflect the many thousands of stories showing the "very real impact the pandemic had".
The stories that are relevant to this phase of the inquiry will be published at noon today, she says.
Carey says the scope of this phase is broad and ambitious, looking at primary, secondary care and tertiary care during the pandemic across the four UK nations.
Some 225,000 pages of evidence have been disclosed to the inquiry, she says.
As health is a devolved matter, there are four distinct health systems in the UK, and she walks the inquiry through the different tiers and key people that make up those systems.
Jacqueline Carey KC, counsel to the inquiry, is speaking now.
She starts off quoting the words former Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the nation as it entered lockdown in 2020: "Stay and home, protect the NHS, save lives".
Carey says the inquiry will closely examine those words and question if lives were saved and why the NHS needed to be protected in the first place.
At what cost was this, she questions, to people who didn't have Covid but relied on healthcare systems, to the physical and mental health of healthcare workers, those who couldn't visit loved ones, those living with long Covid, and the families of people who died.
Baroness Heather Hallett, who is chairing the inquiry, says today's hearings will begin with a 20-minute long "impact video" that will "remind everyone why we are here".
She says this is the first of two parts - the second to be shown another day - and warned that some may find the video distressing in parts.
The footage shows patients and healthcare workers speaking about their experiences of working on the frontline of the pandemic.
We see poet and broadcaster Michael Rosen among those discussing their experience in intensive care.
He recalls being asked by healthcare staff if he would "sign a piece of paper to let us put you to sleep".
He says when he asked if he would wake up, he was told he would have a "50/50" chance.
Michael Rosen: 'I had a 50/50 chance I'd wake up'
Nick Triggle
Health correspondent
This marks the start of hearings for the third module of the Covid public inquiry.
It will look in detail at the effect on healthcare workers and the NHS and comes after public hearings have finished for the first two modules – pandemic preparedness and core decision-making when Covid first hit.
Expect to hear from plenty of health care experts, frontline staff and infection control specialists once the lawyers set out their points on Monday.
This module covers a broad range of topics across health care from the diagnosis and treatment of patients, masks, PPC and infection control in hospitals, shielding of the most vulnerable, NHS staffing and end of life care.
But it will also examine the impact on non-Covid care and how waiting lists ballooned as the NHS as the health service threw everything at Covid in those early days.
This module’s hearings run until December and will then be followed by at least another six modules in what is arguably the biggest ever public inquiry carried out in the UK.
The third phase of the Covid inquiry has just begun.
As we've been reporting, the inquiry is expected to look at the impact of the pandemic on patients, healthcare workers and the wider NHS.
We'll bring you key lines and analysis here, but you can also follow our live stream by pressing the watch live button at the top of this page.
The third phase of the Covid inquiry will set out to examine the impact on the wider healthcare system, including the sharp increase in delays and waiting lists triggered by the pandemic.
Lynda Ross, from Portadown, is among one of the many patients who was affected by the backlog.
Ross was booked in for spinal surgery in early 2020, but her operation was cancelled and, by the time she could see her specialist again, she was told it was too late for treatment.
“The consequence of that is I have to live my life in a level of pain that has me on the same medication as someone who is dying from cancer,” she says.
"It feels like the rest of my life has been destroyed."
Read more: ‘I grieve for the person I was before' - Covid inquiry to begin new phase
We had been expecting to hear from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group, but it appears its news conference has been delayed.
In the meantime, stick with us for the Covid inquiry, which begins at 10:30 BST.
While we wait for the news conference with bereaved families to begin, let's bring you this account from Mandi Masters, a community midwife, who has been telling the BBC about her experience during the pandemic.
Masters, 62, from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, says the NHS was “working in the dark” during the early stages of the pandemic.
“It was absolutely horrendous. We were really struggling, having to scrounge around for masks and gloves,” she adds.
Later, Masters caught Covid-19, and ended up in hospital on oxygen for three weeks.
“My husband took me to A&E but had to leave me there, turn around and walk away,” she says.
“The news was coming out on how many health professionals were dying of Covid, but I was just too poorly to care at that point.
“Looking back, I have to admit, it was extremely frightening.”
Nick Triggle
Health correspondent
As we just reported, Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK is holding a news conference shortly - you can watch it by pressing watch live at the top of the page.
The campaign group is unhappy that more witnesses from bereaved families are not being called.
More than 50 witnesses are due to give evidence during this module, but Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice says that it is "deeply worried" that only two of the 23 witness it put forward have been called to appear.
The group says without greater input from families the inquiry risks failing to learn the true lessons of the pandemic.
But the inquiry is adamant it is doing everything it can to hear from the public. It points to the Every Story Matters project which allows the public to submit evidence online and has run 20 different face-to-face events across the UK.
As part of that it has collected the stories of more than 30,000 healthcare workers, patients and relative which have been compiled into a 200-page report that will be entered into evidence on Monday.