The UK faced an “absolutely catastrophic situation” as it headed towards the first Covid lockdown, England’s chief medical officer has said, as he defended the fact not all patients with other illnesses could get NHS care.
Professor Sir Chris Whitty told the Covid inquiry in central London there were concerns things could get “substantially worse”, even at the point when the NHS was not functioning as well as it should.
He also told how the pandemic was “incredibly harrowing” for NHS staff, “particularly in the first wave before vaccines became available”.
The leading medic was asked by Jacqueline Carey KC, counsel to the inquiry, about one of the reasons for the first lockdown in March 2020, which was to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed.
Describing the health harms from the pandemic, Sir Chris said there were direct harms from Covid – the number of people who died from the virus – and the indirect harms “that come from the system being overwhelmed or at least unable to cope … all diseases, not just Covid, having higher mortality rates than they would have had.”
He said people often forget that, at the time, Covid cases were exponentially rising, with a doubling rate of three to four days.
“At the point we are talking, about four doubling times more would have led us to an absolutely catastrophic situation,” he said.
“I’m not saying that where we were was anywhere short of incredibly difficult and, in many places, individual elements of hospitals, individual hospitals, individual bits (of) the system, were coping nowhere near where they would have been if Covid wasn’t there.
“That’s self evidently true, but if we had not had the lockdown, the expectation is that would have got a lot worse.
“I don’t mean just trivial worse, but really quite substantially worse.”
Asked if the NHS was able to function, he said the “NHS continued to treat sick patients throughout, it continued to treat people who did not have Covid throughout.
“In fact, most, I think, at all times, actually, there were more people in hospital who did not have Covid than had Covid.
“I think certainly for the great majority, I’m sure there were cases where that was not true, it wasn’t true in many ICUs.
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