On Wednesday morning, the COVID-19 Inquiry examining the government’s reaction to the epidemic resumed. The preliminary hearings for the probe were held in London in June. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who led the country from 2019 to 2022, was sworn in today to testify before the panel. He apologized for the agony endured by COVID victims and their families early in his opening address.
“I sort out the vibes of these setbacks and their families, and I’m significantly disturbed for the exacerbation, and the hardship, and the persevering of those losses and their families,” Johnson said. “Moreover, grateful anyway I’m to the hundreds and thousands of clinical benefits workers… who helped with shielding our country all through the unsavory pandemic, I truly believe that his request will assist with finding the solutions to the undeniably challenging inquiries that those casualties and those families are properly inquiring… with the goal that we can safeguard ourselves better from now on and forestall further misery.”
Boris Johnson Apologizes
According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the United Kingdom has 325 COVID fatalities per 100,000 residents, one of the highest fatality rates in Western Europe.
The investigation was established to assist review the government’s reaction to the epidemic and propose potential future lessons. The panel will not hold individuals engaged in the decision-making process criminally liable.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Bereaved families who lost loved ones during the epidemic are among those in attendance. ” “Boris Johnson is supposed to apologize toward the beginning of today.” In any case, he will guarantee that he saved a large number of lives.” Nonetheless, he will claim that he saved thousands of lives. That would be a disgusting misrepresentation of the truth for many of the grieving,” said a spokeswoman for the bereaved family ahead of Johnson’s opening speech on Wednesday.
Some attribute the high fatality rate in the United Kingdom on Johnson’s early reluctance to impose lockdowns. On March 12, 2023, when the country had hundreds of confirmed cases, Johnson’s government issued only broad guidelines, advising people over the age of 70 and immunocompromised individuals to avoid cruises and advising schoolchildren not to travel abroad.
The United Kingdom did not lawfully impose lockdown measures until March 26, 2020. Previous inquiry questions have asserted that Johnson felt the epidemic was “nature’s way of dealing with old people.”
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Nonetheless, Johnson’s defenders have pointed out that the United Kingdom had one of the world’s early vaccination rollouts and was the first country to implement an authorized vaccine for the virus.
Boris Johnson Investigation
“We were bound to make mistakes. “But I believe we were doing our best at the time,” Boris Johnson stated during the investigation.
The hearing chamber has had a tight atmosphere. At one point, members of the grieving families stepped forward, each clutching a piece of paper with a single phrase written on it. They came up with the phrase, “The dead can’t hear your apologies.” According to a BBC correspondent present at the hearing, during a break in the proceedings, a protester yelled at Johnson, “You’re a murderer.”
Hugo Keith, the lawyer in charge of questioning Boris Johnson today, suggested that based on technical reports, it appeared possible that a factory reset had been performed on Johnson’s phone, resulting in the loss of an estimated 5,000 WhatsApp messages that were supposed to be investigated by the inquiry. Johnson denied doing anything like that. ” “I haven’t taken out any WhatsApps from my telephone and I’ve given you all that I think you really want,” Johnson told the crowd.