Welcome back.

The Covid Inquiry is hearing the final day of evidence in its first module, which is looking at pandemic preparedness. Brian Stanton, lawyer for the British Medical Association, and Cabinet Office lawyer Anne Studd are among today's speakers.

Watch the hearing live at the top of this page.

The Covid Inquiry's resumed its hearing - and this afternoon will hear from legal counsel for the key participants - these are the groups which are represented in the public evidence sessions.

You can watch proceedings live by clicking on the play button above.

Andrew Humphrey
Live reporter

This morning marked the end of evidence heard by the inquiry as part of its resilience and preparedness module.

We've heard very moving evidence from those representing Covid-19 bereaved families across the four nations of the United Kingdom.

Matt Fowler, Jane Morrison, Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees and Brenda Doherty, who all lost loved ones during the pandemic spoke about their personal experiences, and on behalf of other bereaved families.

This afternoon we'll hear closing statements from the module's core participants, summarising the hearings over the last month or so.

We won't be bringing you text updates but you can watch a stream of the inquiry by clicking the play button at the top of our page.

And as always, if you want to read more about the Covid inquiry - our topic page is the place to read more.

A little earlier we heard from Brenda Doherty from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group in Northern Ireland.

In a moving statement, Doherty told the inquiry she was determined that her mother, Ruth Burke, would be known for her life and not just become a statistic.

It's been a day of powerful first-hand evidence on the impact of the Covid pandemic from across the UK.

Matt Fowler, co-founder of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Campaign, told the inquiry how after his father Ian died, about 300 people lined the street, but it was "painful" that no more than 10 people were allowed to go to the funeral.

He also detailed abuse he and his fellow campaigners had received on social media, due to Covid attitudes. However he said he had no regrets and stressed lessons needed to be learned.

The next witness to give evidence was Jane Morrison, whose wife Jacky died from Covid. She thanked all the key workers who provided a 'moment of kindness in a dark world'.

Morrison from Scottish Covid Bereaved, highlighted concerns about infection control in hospitals and called on the inquires in the UK and Scotland to move swiftly.

Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees, a campaigner from Wales, explained it was "awful" to watch her father "die gasping for breath" and said covid victims' bodies were treated like "toxic waste".

The last witness was Brenda Doherty from Northern Ireland who told the inquiry her about the death of her mother, Ruth.

She too has faced abuse on social media and said "my mummy was not cannon fodder... it's very important we remember the human cost".

Marie-Louise Connolly
BBC News NI Health Correspondent

Brenda Doherty whose mother was the first woman to die in Northern Ireland with Covid has told the London inquiry that initially her family was told that Covid would be a “flash in the pan and gone by summer.”

Brenda Doherty's mum Ruth Burke, who was 82, was infected with coronavirus after being admitted to hospital in March 2020.

Mrs Doherty recalled the last time she saw her mother in hospital when she took her face in her hands, kissed her, told her she’d see her the next day but in fact she did not see her mum again.

Her mum had been fit to be medically discharged but a delay in accessing a care package meant she could not get home to her own house.

Mrs Doherty recalled how after the prime minister had given his lockdown speech she received a call from the hospital who asked if she agreed to her mother not receiving intervention in her mother’s care.

The doctor told her mum had suffered liver and kidney failure and her heart rate was under tremendous pressure.

She asked if “this was a battle her mum was not going to win,” to which the doctor answered "yes.”

Doherty has now finished wrapping up her evidence, and the inquiry has paused for its lunch break, but stay with us as we bring you analysis of the morning and what we've learned so far.

As she draws her evidence to a close, Brenda Doherty says she is at the inquiry "to remind everybody of the human cost that we paid as bereaved people".

"My mummy was a wonderful wee woman who had the spirit of Goliath," she says.

But too many people who think Covid has gone away, she adds.

"I have now trained myself to ignore those individuals as best I can and focus on the living."

Brenda Doherty is now telling the inquiry the details of her mother's funeral, which was a short ceremony of less than 15 minutes.

"I was told I wasn't allowed at the graveside until mummy was in the hole in the ground," she says.

"I could see the cemetery attender putting the watch up, telling me the time was up."She says the family then went their separate ways and were unable to come together until August 2020.

Brenda Doherty is now telling the inquiry about the the time she became involved in UK Bereaved Families for Justice in the summer of 2020.

"I had been very vocal about mum’s death and that she wouldn’t become a statistic," she says.

"Everybody will know who she was, the life she had and not just how she died."

After her involvement, it became obvious to her that a NI branch of the group was needed.

"We need legislative change here in Northern Ireland."

On Mother's Day, Brenda Doherty tried to deliver a nightdress to her mother that said 'Mum you are my world', but was told she could not enter.

A nurse passed on the gift.

She says nurses told her that her mother was improving and "if she keeps this up", they could see her returning home soon.

The following day they could not give her any further information on the phone, a doctor then rang her and explained that due to her mother's ailing health, an intervention in her care would be unkindly.

Brenda Doherty's mother died 12 hours later.

She tells the inquiry they family never received any of her mother's clothes but she likes to imagine her mother wearing the nightdress she bought her when she died.

"But the reality is I know she was double-bagged, like toxic waste," she says.

Jim Reed
Health reporter, BBC News

We've heard a lot this morning about nosocomial infections.

These are cases of hospital-acquired Covid caught while the patient was being treated for another health problem.

Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees's father Ian died from Covid after being admitted for an unconnected gallbladder infection in a Welsh hospital in October 2020.

Jane Morrison spoke about the loss of her wife, Jacky, who caught Covid on her 15th day in hospital in Scotland after being admitted for jaundice.

How much of a problem were nosocomial infections in the pandemic?

Figures from the first wave of Covid are harder to come by because widespread testing simply wasn't available at the time.

But academics at the University of Oxford , externalestimated that 112,628 cases of Covid were caught in hospital in England in the two years between August 2020 and August 2022 - one in six of all hospital cases.

At the height of the Omicron wave in 2022 it was estimated that as many as 30 per cent of the patients in hospital with Covid caught the virus after being admitted for another problem.

That is the reason why all the witnesses today have spoken at length about the importance of infection control in a hospital setting.

• The deaths of more than 5,000 people in Northern Ireland have been linked to Covid, according to Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA)
• NISRA figures show that between 19 March 2020 and 23 June this year, the virus was mentioned on the death certificates of 5,325 people
• Northern Ireland stopped recording new cases of the virus in May last year
• Until then, there had been 713,294 positive tests recorded since the start of the pandemic

• More than 1.43 million people, out of a population of about 1.9 million, have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine

Brenda Doherty is describing the last night she saw her mother, Ruth, in the hospital.

She says her mother was rocking on a chair with one tear on her cheek, and had said she just wanted to go home.

"At that stage, as far as we were concerned, Mummy would be coming home, so I told her not to worry."

She says she took her mother's face in her hands, gave her a kiss and told her that she loved her, adding she hoped to see her the next day.

Brenda Doherty is telling the inquiry that her mother had attended a routine appointment for an X-Ray and later that day received a phone call from her mother's GP to say that she needed to bring her immediately to a hospital.

She says when her mother was admitted to hospital on 11 March 2020 there was very limited PPE on staff, "just a plastic apron".

"My sister actually asked about Covid and we were told not to worry, it would be 'a flash in the pan and gone by the summer'."

Image source, The Covid-19 Inquiry

Jenny Rees
BBC Wales Health Correspondent

So much of the focus from the hearings to date has been around how well prepared the NHS and governments were.

Today a strong message from Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees was that many of the bereaved families were simply not prepared for how a death would be impacted by Covid.

Whether that’s managing palliative care for a loved one dying with it, or how different a funeral would look if bodies were treated as “contaminated”.

Her father did not have a good death - his clothes were handed over in a Tesco carrier bag.

They've worked with authorities to change things like that and "channel that grief into areas we can really make change".

Image source, BrendaDoherty

We're back from the break and now hearing from Brenda Doherty, a leading figure in the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group.

Her mother, Ruth Burke, was the first woman (and fourth person) to die in Northern Ireland with Covid, aged 82.

Ms Doherty said the family had so many regrets, including not being able to kiss their mum one last time or being able to bury her in a favourite red dress.

She is a leading figure in the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, and she has welcomed the announcement of relevant witnesses from across Northern Ireland being called to give evidence at the inquiry.

"Our trusts are completely different, they're a lot more complex so therefore, we need people who know Northern Ireland and its systems,” she told BBC News NI in April.

• You can read more here.

• At the height of the first wave of the pandemic, in April 2020, there were 70 deaths a day due to Covid, with the virus the underlying cause
• There were more than 2,200 deaths due to Covid in Wales in the three months of the first wave (15 March to 15 June 2020)
• Deaths of care home residents involving Covid peaked in the week of 24 April, with 125 deaths
• Excess deaths - the number of deaths above normal levels - were 61% higher involving care home residents in the first three months of the first wave

Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees thanks all of the people involved in the UK Covid inquiry for treating her with respect and with sensitivity.

There's a whole generation that don't have the mechanisms to complain and questio and they are in shock, she says.

"We'd like some change to happen in their lifetime," Marsh-Rees says.

Baroness Hallett replies: "We'll do our very best."

There's another 10 minute break.

Marsh-Rees says preparing families for end-of-life is another important lesson to learn.

"Something that was not communicated to us is when someone dies, they are almost treated like toxic waste and zipped away," she says.

"My dad did not have a good death.

"My mum cries daily – we’d like some change to happen in their lifetime. If it doesn’t they’re just left with that feeling that nobody cared."