UK Covid Inquiry Today: Jason Leitch and Devi Sridhar appear amid fallout from Nicola Sturgeon WhatsApp row
Recap with The Scotsman after National Clinical Director Professor Jason Leitch gave evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.
Live: Jason Leitch faces the UK Covid-19 Inquiry
Key Events
- The UK Covid-19 Inquiry continues to sit in Edinburgh to examine the Scottish pandemic response
- National Clinical Director Professor Jason Leitch is to give evidence
- This comes after it was revealed Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Gregor Smith encouraged colleagues to delete their WhatsApps
Prof Sridhar said there were a lot of unused coronavirus tests in Scotland, and she felt they needed to be used.
We are now talking about an article where Prof Sridhar said Scotland could eliminate coronavirus if it were not for England.
In the article she said there were two different approaches where Scotland seemed to aim for maximum suppression, whereas England aimed to keep Covid-19 within NHS capacity and get back to normality as soon as possible.
She said she was “frustrated” at not knowing England’s strategy and said she was aware of the difficulty of finding consensus between the four nations.
She also said she really wanted to avoid a winter lockdown, but the NHS became overwhelmed.
Counsel Jamie Dawson KC is now asking whether the second wave of the virus was predominantly caused by people who took holidays, particularly to Spain.
Prof Sridhar said: “Yeah, I did a New York Times piece saying we will pay for our summer holidays with winter lockdowns.
“The main challenge was we didn’t accept trade-offs to save lives.
“Some places traded off privacy, some traded off international mobility.
“It felt like here people wanted everything and were angry at not getting everything.
“We don’t want to put breaks into schools or daily life, so I thought where the breaks could be put into airports so travel and international mobility is reduced.”
She added: “It is a real shame looking back that we had that opportunity to avoid a winter lockdown.”
She added this lead to the NHS reaching breaking point at having a stay-at-home lockdown over the winter period.
Prof Sridhar says experts who knew about the virus were moving to islands and the countryside and taking their kids out of school to prepare for the pandemic - but the general public wasn’t getting the same message at the beginning.
She said she felt people deserved to have the same information the experts had so they had the same chance to protect their loved ones.
Prof Sridhar said people thought the virus was just about the elderly and she felt it was important she spoke out.
Prof Sridhar has now gone into some of the backlash she received on the back of her work during the pandemic.
She said: “I have gotten death threats, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, you name it.
“But I’ve taken it because there is a bigger idea that we need to help each other and do good.”
She added she is not sure she would speak out again given what abuse she received, and said there is a general problem with online misinformation.
Lead Counsel Jamie Dawson KC asked if she was offered support from the Scottish Government and how helpful it was - she said it was offered, but she didn’t take it up.
Prof Sridhar’s evidence session ended by her being asked by the Covid-19 Bereaved Families what the one mistake the Scottish Government made during the pandemic.
She said: “I think the biggest mistake was around testing, and that affects so many issues.
“We didn’t have a testing strategy, capacity or capabilities and linked to that NHS Scotland didn’t have adequate PPE.
“That was a huge issue - my students were working on wards without appropriate protection.
“You need to have a testing system up because you need to know who is infectious so others can avoid becoming infected by that person.
“I think we were very late on that, that was the biggest failing in the early days.”
That’s Prof Sridhar’s evidence session over.
Lady Hallett concluded by saying: “I am very grateful to you and as you may know I have heard about the kind of abuse experts like you have suffered.
“It is dreadful and I know how distressing it must be and the impact is why would people bother?
“I’ve had to put up with similar kinds of abuse.
“My only hope is people like you continue to feel that public service is worthwhile.”
We’ve just had a topical question on Covid WhatsApps being deleted in the Scottish Parliament from Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP.
Speaking afterwards Dr Gulhane, who is the Scottish Conservatives’ health spokesman, said: “As if the industrial-scale deletion of Covid-related WhatsApp messages by SNP ministers and officials wasn’t bad enough, the deputy first minister couldn’t even bring herself to apologise for it.
“The shameful culture of secrecy came from the very top - with Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney, like senior officials, deleting all their pandemic messages.
“This is the same Nicola Sturgeon who stood up at her daily briefings with a pretence of moral superiority, while, behind the scenes, her government were laughing at us as they covered their tracks.
“This wasn’t the only skewed priority from the SNP during the pandemic - extraordinary minutes from a cabinet meeting show that at the height of Covid, as the death toll mounted, the SNP were discussing a fresh independence push.
“No matter how grave the crisis, nothing will stop the SNP from pursuing their political obsession. It’s repugnant.”
Scottish Labour are calling for Professor Jason Leitch to be sacked as national clinical director after his appearance at the Covid inquiry.
The party’s deputy leader Dame Jackie Baillie MSP said: “Ken Thomson, the man who drafted the Scottish Government’s records management policy, was advising people how to avoid complying with it.
“The national clinical director Jason Leitch, who helped to shape the Covid regulations, was advising the current First Minister how to avoid the rules.
“And Nicola Sturgeon, who promised transparency, has alongside John Swinney and senior civil servants deleted WhatsApp messages on an industrial scale.
“Whether messages were deleted nightly or weekly, it is clear that Jason Leitch wiped his messages completely and seemed to find the period during the pandemic all quite funny judging from the messages we have seen.
“If the Scottish Government agrees that his behaviour was inappropriate then it is time Mr Leitch was sacked.”
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