A Liverpool Intensive Care Unit doctor has delivered a heartbreaking response to images of Boris Johnson drinking with colleagues at a Downing Street party.
Dr Peter Hampshire led Liverpool's Intensive Care Unit through the numerous devastating waves of the pandemic. The city found itself repeatedly in the eye of the storm as infections soared and health services became overwhelmed.
The ECHO was invited to see Dr Hampshire's team in action in November 2020 and we witnessed exhausted staff fighting to keep patients alive in the most difficult of circumstances. It was around this time that the Prime Minister was pictured drinking with a gathered crowd for a Downing Street leaving party.
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The Prime Minister was heavily criticised in the long-awaited Sue Gray report, which was finally delivered yesterday and painted a picture of widespread partying and rule-breaking in Downing Street during the pandemic. Ms Gray said senior leaders like the Prime Minister must take responsibility for the culture that pervaded. Mr Johnson refused calls to resign his position and instead urged people to move on.
His supposed apology, or lack thereof, went down badly with many who were badly impacted by the worst ravages of the pandemic and the lockdowns, including people who were unable to say goodbye to loved ones and health workers operating in the most traumatic of circumstances.
Dr Hampshire responded to one of the images of Mr Johnson, included in the report, which showed him holding a drink aloft at the November 13 event, at a time when the entire country was in lockdown. Liverpool was in the midst of a brutal second wave around that time and the hospitals were struggling to cope with the amount of desperately ill patients coming in.
Recalling the exact day, Dr Hampshire said: "This was Friday 13th November. I'd just finished working a week on the ICU. Liverpool was in the middle of a catastrophic wave of Covid which filled up the hospital and stopped most planned surgical cases. There was no vaccine. People dying everyday. No visiting allowed."
The Sue Gray report findings have also caused understandable anger for those who lost people during the pandemic. The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group responded to the details of the rule breaking with a powerful statement.
They said: "There we have it. Whilst the country had one of the highest death rates in the world from Covid-19, they were celebrating over cheese and wine and drinking themselves sick over a Karaoke machine. When they refused to learn lessons and allowed the virus to run riot in the second wave, killing more people than it had in the first, they instead prioritised Secret Santa.
Speaking of the Prime Minister, they added: “Not content with partying whilst he failed to protect our loved ones, the prime minister has now spent months ignoring and lying to us."
