Keith brings up remarks at a press conference in early March 2020 where Boris Johnson said the "UK is well prepared" and "plans are in place".

Keith then asks Johnson about shaking hands with Covid patients at the Royal Free Hospital in north London on 1 March.

"I do think I shouldn't have done that in retrospect," Johnson replies.

"I should have been more precautionary, but I wanted to be encouraging to people."

The clip from that 2020 news conference is below. "I shook hands with everybody, you'll be pleased to know," he said then.

The afternoon session has resumed and Boris Johnson is back giving evidence. He's being questioned by the inquiry's lawyer Hugo Keith KC.

We'll be bringing you key updates and analysis here, and you can also watch the former PM's evidence live at the top of the page - just click the Play button.

Helena Rothman
Reporting from outside the inquiry

Maddy Corper wants to tell everyone about long Covid. People are thinking about the deceased, but many others have been left disabled or with long-term illness.

Maddy caught Covid in May 2020. She was a freight train driver and caught the virus at work - and is now usually in a wheelchair, or on bed rest.

Louise Brown says she wants to hear from Boris Johnson about partying in No 10 when he should have been running the country.

She says during the second wave of Covid, she was not allowed to see her sister who was in intensive care.

Jordan Kenny
BBC Newsbeat

In Leicester, pharmacist Sheetal believes the government could have done things differently during the pandemic - but is happy to give Boris Johnson the benefit of the doubt after the former prime minister apologised.

“In hindsight, maybe he did [his] best at the time,” she tells BBC Newsbeat.

“There were so many things that they could have done better but with his apology, I think people will take it as whatever it means personally to them.”

She remembers the pandemic as “awful” and says she was “really disappointed by the way the government behaved behind closed doors” during the pandemic.

“Whether an apology will help alleviate any of that… you know, if that's the best he can do, then that's what he's doing.”

Ellie Price
Reporting from outside the inquiry

There are two press conferences running at the same time from various groups of bereaved families.

They all seem united in their anger towards Boris Johnson. And say they certainly haven’t heard anything to change their minds this morning.

Ellie Price
Reporting from outside the inquiry

Outside the inquiry we hear the constant blare of car horns. A group of anti-vaccine protesters have invited passing cars to "beep for freedom".

There are far more protesters than I’ve seen on any day before.

They’re from various organisations including anti-vaccine groups, those representing bereaved families and people campaigning for victims of long Covid.

The inquiry is now breaking for lunch – so it’s time for us to catch our breath and look back over what we heard:

An apology: Boris Johnson said sorry for the "pain and the loss and the suffering" in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic, acknowledging that mistakes were made - for which he took personal responsibility

Too many men: The ex-PM also admitted he should have had a better gender balance in his team, explaining: "Too many meetings were male dominated"

A defence: But he also insisted "we did our level best" to manage the pandemic, using the information available at the time - and defended lockdowns as being "very important"

A (back-handed) endorsement: Johnson said former health secretary Matt Hancock “may have had defects, but I thought he was doing his best in challenging circumstances”

Early recollections: Between January and February, Johnson said Covid was a "cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man's hand”

Failing to twig: The ex-PM then said he was “really rattled” by the outbreaks in Italy in February 2020 – admitting he should have "twigged much sooner" how serious the virus was

Close to tears: Johnson fought back tears while speaking about the March 2020 lockdown, and the "tragic, tragic year"

Interruptions: The session was interrupted more than once - with inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett ordering the removal of four people from the room

The hearing is due to resume just before 14:00, so make sure to stay on this page.

Johnson appears to become emotional as Keith asks about the debate between going into lockdown versus the risks of behavioural fatigue.

Johnson says he was anxious about locking down too early without a vaccination programme or any other way out.

"It was an anxiety, a problem that was very prevalent during those early days," he says.

His voice breaks as he says: "We have to be realistic about 2020 - the whole year - that whole tragic, tragic year."

Jim Reed
Reporting from the inquiry

The inquiry's lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC, has been walking Johnson through the chronology of the pandemic in some detail starting with the early period, from January to March 2020.

It feels like Johnson has accepted that, with hindsight, he should have seen the risks - or "twigged" as he put it - earlier.

"When you hear about an Asian pandemic that is about to sweep the world, you think you’ve heard it before and that was the problem," he said.

But he made the point that this wasn't just his view - but the opinion of the whole government system at the time.

He says that his view changed when, in a meeting at the end of February 2020, he was told the virus could cause 500,000 UK deaths in a "reasonable worst case scenario".

"That was just a horrifying figure, and I couldn't believe it, I've got to be honest with you," he said.

Boris Johnson has just told the inquiry that he "should have twigged" much sooner how serious Covid was.

Earlier today, he said he takes personal responsibility for all the decisions he made as prime minister during the pandemic.

But he stressed that “with hindsight it may be easy to see things that we could have done differently”.

Image source, PA Media

Hugo Keith, the lawyer for the inquiry, next references the 11 municipalities which locked down in Italy in mid-February 2020 and the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

"Scenes from Italy really rattled me," Johnson tells the inquiry.

"I remember seeing a note somewhere saying the fatality rate in Italy was 8% because they had an elderly population, I thought 'well My God, we've got an elderly population. This is this is appalling'," he says.

"And my instinct was 'this cannot possibly be be right, this number'."

Johnson admits the UK should have "twigged much sooner". "I should have twigged," he adds.

Did the science advice change?published at 12:20 Greenwich Mean Time 6 December 2023

12:20 GMT 6 December 2023

Nick Triggle
Health correspondent

The nature of the scientific advice Johnson was receiving has been the subject of quite a bit of the questioning so far.

He says it is clear now the UK and its scientists had “underestimated the scale and pace of the challenge” at the start.

All the way up to mid March, his key scientific advisers were not pushing for a full lockdown.

But the scientists had underestimated how quickly Covid was spreading – they thought the peak would come in the summer when in reality the UK was well on the way to it in the spring.

When they realised it prompted a frantic set of meetings over the weekend of the 14 and 15 March, triggering the process which resulted in the full lockdown announced on 23 March.

He contrasted that to the “go hard and go early” message from scientists in September when they were spelling out the merits of a circuit breaker. He decided against that to start with before imposing a month-long lockdown in November.

But – as Keith has gone on to question – why the government and scientists were not paying more attention to the emerging evidence from the rest of the world – the high death rate and speed of spread – remains one of the big unanswered questions in the inquiry so far.

Keith recaps some earlier inquiry evidence from Sir Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health, and one of Johnson's aides Imran Shafi who said the former PM expressed scepticism about fatality figures.

"I don't remember that. But I do remember the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or so-called mad cow disease) scare and I remember the immense destruction that did to the agriculture sector in this country," Johnson says.

"I think it would be fair to say I wanted to probe them on their forecasts and to try and understand what they were making."

Keith next brings up a text exchange in a group including former adviser Dominic Cummings and the PM dated 6 February.

Cummings says a briefing is needed on coronavirus because it is about to "sweep [the] world", adding it will be a "major comms exercise". Johnson responds on the need to discuss "coronavirus comms".

Asked why there was a focus on communications rather than mitigation, he tells the inquiry: "I think it would be fair to say the scientific community within Whitehall at that stage was not telling us... that this was something that was going to require urgent and immediate action."

The inquiry moves to discuss border controls.

Keith, the lawyer for the inquiry, asks Johnson about advice he was receiving "consistently" from 5 February to the end of the month that closing borders would not work to stop the virus entering the UK.

Johnson says the "overwhelming scientific consensus" was that trying to interrupt the virus with tougher border controls "bought you really very little" - at most, it would delay the virus entering by a few weeks, he says.

"I think a lot of people in the country found that very difficult to understand," he says, adding that the public often "believes instinctively you can fix this with tough border control".

Helena Rotham
Reporting from outside the inquiry

As we've been reporting, a group of four women were removed from the inquiry a short while earlier.

One of these women, Fran Hall, has been speaking to the BBC outside Dorland House.

She says the group knew Boris Johnson was going to apologise, so prepared signs that read "the dead can't hear your apologies" to take into the inquiry room with them.

The group sat in the back row and stood up with their signs as Johnson launched into his apology.

Hugh Pym
Health editor, reporting from the inquiry

There has been an interesting insight into Boris Johnson’s view of the timing of the second lockdown in November 2020.

Successive witnesses have argued it should have happened several weeks earlier. Johnson though suggested there was no clear advice from experts.

In an animated answer, said he was faced with scientists saying “go early and go hard” who had in March warned of the danger of locking down too early because the public wouldn’t tolerate it.

It was an “appalling problem” at the time, he said, because with no drugs or vaccines there was anxiety about doing the same things “over and over again”.

Referring to some of the evidence in diaries and messages at the time he said they reflected “the anxiety of people doing their best who can’t see an easy solution”.

Would the public 'tire' of lockdowns?published at 11:53 Greenwich Mean Time 6 December 2023

11:53 GMT 6 December 2023

Jim Reed
Reporting from the inquiry

Four times this morning Johnson has mentioned the concept of 'behavioural fatigue".

This was the idea that the British public might tire of lockdown restrictions if they were imposed too early, and compliance rates would decline.

The former prime minister said that argument was made "powerfully" and "certainly had a big effect on me".

The same concept was mentioned twice in news conferences in March 2020 by England's chief medical officer, Sir Chris Whitty.

When Whitty gave evidence though he said he regretted the way it was used, describing it as "probably my most prominent communications error". He said it should never have been used as a reason to delay taking action.

Johnson appears to be saying that he was also heavily influenced by the idea when some of the key decisions in March 2020 were being made.

Keith reminds the inquiry of five Cobra - emergency response committee - meetings that took place in the space of five weeks from January to February 2020, which Johnson did not chair.

Johnson is asked how, with the regularity of these meetings, he could not have realised coronavirus was of national concern.

The former PM says that Cobra is a "regular occurrence" and that the virus had not "broken upon the political world" by that point, citing that he was not asked about it during Prime Minister's Questions in this period.

He adds that the World Health Organization (WHO) only declared the pandemic on 12 March.

After a brief mid-morning break, the inquiry's lawyer Hugo Keith KC asks Boris Johnson about his early recollections of the coronavirus outbreak in January 2020.

Johnson mentions a conversation with Matt Hancock on 7 January where he said "keep an eye on it".

Between January and February, Johnson said Covid was a "cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man's hand" - but he then describes "a crescendo of activity" towards the end of February.

"But, in government it wasn't being escalated as something for national concern," Johnson tells the inquiry.