Doctors started writing their wills in 2020, UK Covid inquiry told

Prof Philip Banfield says profession was traumatised' after events of pandemic, as he criticises government response

Doctors started writing their wills and making sure their life insurance was up to date when the pandemic began in 2020 because they understood what was coming," the UK Covid inquiry heard on Thursday.

Giving evidence to the inquiry, Prof Philip Banfield, from the British Medical Association, said: We had no doubt that we were facing something that was completely unprecedented."

Their failure to include an official, strong, independent public health presence on the public stage.

Their slowness in introducing face masks. Policies like face masks were based on a political narrative rather than a public health narrative: specifically economic and other factors that lay outside public health," he said.

The decision to shift away from contact-tracing on 12 March 2020, which failed to control the population for a further 11 days.

The consequences of eat out to help out", which drove up new Covid-19 infections by between 8% and 17%.

The chopping and changing" of the three-tier structure, which limited people to restrictions including staying overnight only with those in one's household or support bubble and working from home where possible.