The UK’s former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance is giving evidence to the Covid inquiry on Monday.
Diary entries written daily throughout the crisis by Sir Patrick are expected to provide new damaging details of the former prime minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the pandemic.
Here’s how you can follow the inquiry live, and what Sir Patrick has said so far.
How can I watch the Covid inquiry?
The Covid inquiry has a dedicated YouTube channel on which you can watch each day of proceedings live.
The channel also uploads previous days’ hearings, if you want to watch them back.
What has Sir Patrick Vallance said?
The inquiry has heard excerpts from Sir Patrick’s diaries in which he describes what – according to Andrew O’Connor KC – appears to be a “repeated failure” from Mr Johnson to “understand graphs, scientific concepts and so on, forgetting things that had been explained to him a few hours earlier”.
Sir Patrick told the inquiry: “I think he would be the first to admit it wasn’t his forte, and that he did struggle with some of the concepts and we did need to repeat them often.”
He added, however, that this was true of many world leaders and was not necessarily an issue “unique” to Mr Johnson, “but it was hard work times to try and make sure that he had understood what a particular graph or piece of data was saying”.
Sir Patrick also told the inquiry he had also suggested locking down London ahead of the rest of the country because the capital was “so far ahead” in terms of the virus.
He added: “The following day, when the prime minister announced that there will be voluntary measures to keep people from making contacts, I also suggested on that day that London was so far ahead that it would be necessary to possibly lock down London.
“I think, frankly, on that weekend, an in principle decision was taken lockdown would be required. It then took several more days to work that into a full mandatory process.
“But whether it was mandatory or voluntary is a political issue not not a scientific one.”
Sir Patrick has confirmed to the inquiry that he believed that the first Covid lockdown in 2020 was introduced a week too late.
He said that a decision was taken over a lockdown earlier in March, but took a while to be implemented before lockdown was introduced on 23 March, adding that it “would have been sensible” to move faster on this.
However, he added: “There were some very significant legal requirements around that.”
