The inquiry is now looking back at the very early days of the outbreak, when Covid was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Specifically, Keith and Van-Tam are discussing whether or not it was possible to tell at that point, around January 2020, how serious coronavirus would be.

Van-Tam describes co-ordinating with the UK's international partners at the time.

Keith reads out an email sent by Van-Tam in early January 2020, which said there was "no known person-to-person transmission" at the time.

Of course, we later discovered that Covid could absolutely be spread between humans.

Image source, UK Covid inquiry

Keith asks Van-Tam about "extremely hateful" messages he received from the public at the time. He asks whether he considered leaving his position at any time. "Yes," Van-Tam answers.

Van-Tam says the workload was "very, very intense" at the beginning of the pandemic - 16-hour days, seven days a week.

But he says that what really "got to" him was when he and his family started receiving threats.

I did not expect my family to be threatened with having their throats cut," he says.

"I did not expect the police to have to say 'will you move out in the middle of the evening while we look at this and potentially make some arrests?'"

He adds this his family didn't move out in the end, because they didn't want to leave their cat behind - and stresses that he brings these events up because he is worried that if a future crisis happens, people will not want to sign up for a job like his because of the implications that come with it.

The inquiry lawyer is asking Van-Tam some specifics about being England's deputy chief medical officer during the pandemic - how it worked, the meetings he sat in, the information he was privy to, etc.

He speaks of the number of meetings that officials like him were expected to go to during the pandemic. "You lose track" of the number you're attending, he says, adding that he and others were overwhelmed by the "horrendous" workload.

On certain high-profile meetings such as Cobra - an emergency response committee made up of ministers, civil servants and others - Van-Tam says he would only have been called to go when Whitty couldn't.

His key focus as DCMO, he says, was getting Covid vaccines rolled out to the public.

Image source, UK Covid inquiry

Van-Tam, having been sworn in, is thanked by the inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith KC for his patience after Prof Sir Chris Whitty's evidence ran over.

Keith runs Van-Tam through his credentials and career history, including up until 2017 when he was made England's deputy chief medical officer (DCMO).

Asked if the DCMO is operationally independent of the government, Van-Tam says yes and that he always felt able to make the points he wished to, while working under Whitty.

We'll bring you any key lines from his evidence right here.

Image source, PA Media

We're now hearing evidence from Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, another key figure during the pandemic.

As deputy chief medical officer, Van-Tam was a regular at No 10's televised Covid press briefings, which for a while happened daily.

His analogies turned him into a notable public-facing figure - he told the BBC in 2020: "I love metaphors. I think they bring complex stories to life for people".

Van-Tam stepped down as deputy chief medical officer in 2022, when Covid had eased in the UK.

In May of this year, he became a consultant clinical adviser at Moderna - one of a handful of pharmaceutical companies whose Covid vaccines the UK government rolled out.

The UK Covid inquiry is sitting again - and now it's the turn of Jonathan Van-Tam to face questions.

He was England's deputy chief medical officer (CMO) during the pandemic - behind Chris Whitty.

Don't forget you can live-stream proceedings by pressing the play button at the top of this page.

Whitty 'couldn't see many options' other than second lockdownpublished at 13:54 Greenwich Mean Time 22 November 2023

13:54 GMT 22 November 2023

Jim Reed
Health reporter

After lengthy questioning about the first lockdown in March 2020, the inquiry skirted over the later part of that year very quickly.

Sir Chris Whitty was asked only a handful of questions about the autumn of 2020, when scientific advisers were clearly very concerned about rising Covid infections.

He said that, by the time a second four-week national lockdown was announced in England on 31 October, he "couldn't see many other options".

He did, though, suggest that earlier action could have led to "less onerous" restrictions that autumn.

He added that the country was "bunny hopping" around this time - abandoning restrictions "unnecessarily" and then having to "slam on the brakes".

By mid-December though, a new variant of coronavirus had emerged in Kent and was spreading fast around the country. Whitty said that version of the virus had "hugely greater transmissibility", and suggested the third lockdown in January 2021 was inevitable.

What did we learn from Sir Chris Whitty?published at 13:35 Greenwich Mean Time 22 November 2023

13:35 GMT 22 November 2023

Hugh Pym
Health editor

For much of this day and a half of hearings, Professor Whitty has maintained his calm, measured, scientific approach.

But the mask fell when he argued forcefully - with blunter language - against the idea of “herd immunity” as a policy.

Critics of lockdown have said that only the most vulnerable should have been kept at home - with the healthier population exposed to the virus and the likelihood of only mild illness, while keeping their normal civil liberties. They will continue to make those points.

But Whitty, perhaps stung by the criticism, said it was a “ridiculous goal of policy, and dangerous” and would never be achievable as it would require incredibly long periods of isolation for the most vulnerable.

And in a moment of candour, Whitty noted what he said was his “biggest error”.

He said in the days before lockdown that “there is a risk that if we go too early people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time”.

That view shaped some thinking and caution in government at the time. Whitty told the inquiry his explanation had not been good and it was a mistake.

Image source, Crown Copyright

Inquiry Chair Baroness Hallett has adjourned proceedings until 14:00

When the inquiry returns, we will hear from former deputy chief medical officer for England, Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam.

Stay with us for the latest updates and analysis.

Image source, Crown Copyright

Before the break, Sir Chris Whitty was asked about Boris Johnson's attitude towards long Covid, including reports, external about how the former PM once referred to the condition.

Anthony Metzer KC, who represents groups supporting those with long Covid, asks if Whitty was aware that during 2020 and part of 2021, Johnson thought the condition didn't exist.

"I was aware," Whitty answers.

Asked why he didn't do more to convince Johnson otherwise, Whitty insists that research and "NHS activity" on long Covid was triggered without the PM needing to be involved.

Later on in the pandemic, Whitty had a "discussion" with Johnson about long Covid and they "agreed on an approach," he says.

Image source, Crown Copyright

Here's more from the questions asked to Sir Chris Whitty before the inquiry went on a break.

Danny Friedman KC, representing disabled people’s organisations, posed a question on whether Whitty had discussions about reducing risks with disabled groups.

Whitty says there were long discussions about shielding - which is about how to protect those at high risk of severe illness from Covid.

Friedman asks specifically about how people with Down’s syndrome should have been added to the shielding list in March 2020. Whitty argues that it would have been hard to assess this at that time but they were added later in November.

Whitty adds that the aim was for a “balance of harm”. Stressing that the disadvantages had to be weighed with being added to the list, such as mental health implications from shielding over the pandemic.

We're still hearing questions from representatives of specific groups, but we're told the stenographer has had such a tough morning that she's taken a break. She'll catch up via recordings.

She just missed a question from the Trades Union Congress representative asking about financial support for workers.

Whitty having answered, the rest of the inquiry is now taking a break. They'll be back at 14:00.

Whitty is now asked whether certain groups were identified as being more at risk from the pandemic.

Whitty says that it was possible to predict that some disadvantaged groups would be affected but that not all of them were fully predictable including ethnicity, which then took longer to unravel and work out.

Whitty is then asked whether proactive steps were taken to protect the certain minorities that were identified.

He says that the "single most important thing" given the extremely infectious nature of the disease was to get infection rate down as that protected everyone.

Whitty stresses it was the absolute single priority at the beginning.

Image source, Crown Copyright

Covid "shone a spotlight" on public health inequalities across the UK, Whitty says.

He tells the inquiry that many of those hit hardest by the virus were "people living in communities where public health is not adequate".

Image source, Crown Copyright

Whitty is now asked about public health messaging issues surrounding Black, ethnic and linguistic minorities, by Leslie Thomas KC representing the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations.

Whitty says he was alive to this issue from early April 2020 and commissioned studies to address and understand them.

He is then asked what factors led to these failures in messaging.

Whitty says issues included linguistic challenges - "not every major language spoken in the UK was adequately picked up at an early stage" - and challenges around channels of communication, as not everyone got their information from official government sources or national news outlets.

Whitty says a lot of work was done but there is more to learn.

Now on to face masks.

Mitchell refers to a diary entry from the government's chief scientific adviser during the pandemic, Sir Patrick Vallance.

On 24 August 2020, Vallance wrote: "Scotland breaks ranks over face masks and schools despite CMO (England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty) having worked hard to get all (the UK's other) CMOs aligned to a statement released the day before".

Whitty says he can't recall the exact statement referred to by Vallance, but says the CMOs from all four nations "really wanted" to get decisions about children returning to school "right".

Vallance's entry wouldn't have been about "a major disagreement" between England and Scotland, Whitty says.

We're moving on to data problems. Whitty is asked if there were problems getting data from Scotland.

He says the data in Scotland was some of the best in the UK but that getting data into wider data sets and "used by the right people" proved very difficult.

He says it wasn't just complicated to get data across nations, but within them as well. He adds that what the pandemic demonstrated was that when data sharing and merging is achieved, "you can get far better information for all four nations."

"The sharing of data was one of the most powerful things we achieved, both between nations and within nations," Whitty says.

Image source, Crown Copyright

Scotland's representative, Claire Mitchell KC, is now asking questions.

She pulls up correspondence between Matt Hancock, the then-health secretary, to Boris Johnson. In the exchange, Hancock says Whitty "thinks the Scots are going soft on mass gatherings".

Whitty tells the inquiry he "certainly" did not use that phrase, which "would have been the interpretation of Hancock".

"I must have been identifying that I felt that in Scotland there was greater concern about mass gatherings than in England... do not take those words as my words," he stresses.

They are now talking about the impact of different messages in Wales and England on border areas.

Heaven asks whether, when there were divergencies, were they discussed in advance - and if so, can Whitty give an example involving Wales?

Whitty says the UK's chief medical officers (CMO) were careful to discuss only scientific aspects while being aware of the policy discussions in the four nations.

He says that beyond that, it was up to the Welsh CMO to discuss that with the Welsh government, and not on him to opine on policies in Wales as he had no responsibility there.

"The science discussions were collective, the policy decisions were separate," Whitty says, adding they had to be careful not to get entangled into politics.

It was important for CMOs to have a collective scientific view, Whitty says, but that policy decisions had to be taken within the nation

Heaven now puts forward criticism that data on Covid "focused overwhelmingly" on England, to the detriment of the other UK nations.

Whitty responds that at the beginning of the pandemic, it was difficult for officials and scientists to obtain data from both England and the wider UK.

Additionally, "data is based on numbers" and there are many more people in England than there are in the other three nations, he notes.

Whitty says data collection became more diverse as the pandemic progressed.