The Telegraph’s Wednesday front page is dedicated to a huge trove of the WhatsApp messages of former health secretary Matt Hancock, which journalist Isabel Oakeshott has leaked to, in her words, avoid a Covid “whitewash”.
The resulting stories will be drip-fed out over the next few days, but we’ve already learned quite a few things from the exchanges. Both Oakeshott and the Telegraph were lockdown-sceptic, and seem to believe the leaked messages will vindicate that view. But those we’ve seen so far confirm what was already obvious for those with a front-row seat on the UK government’s bungling of Covid-19: that there was a huge gulf between what public health experts and scientific advisers were recommending and what the UK government actually did – even as ministers claimed to be “following the science”.
This is exemplified by the exchange from April 2020, in which Hancock responds to recommendations from the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, that anyone going into a care home should be tested for Covid. Hancock seems to push back, telling an aide that this approach “muddies the waters”, and instead opting to test only those coming from hospital – while publicly claiming to have thrown a “protective ring” around care homes. (Hancock has said that these messages were taken out of context, and that he had pushed for Whitty’s advice to be followed but was told in a meeting earlier that day that it wasn’t logistically possible to test everyone.) There were more than 30,000 coronavirus deaths in two waves of infection during 2020 in care homes in England and Wales.
When debating how best to respond to the pandemic, my public health colleagues and I were driven by looking at the latest data, analysing it and presenting detailed advice to ministers. In contrast, Hancock’s messages on testing imply that he was more driven by publicity, and what would make him look good – the phrase “muddies the waters” seems to refer to the perception of a policy, rather than how it would work.
![‘Mass testing [seen here in September 2020] was the best early path to avoid lockdown and suppress Covid-19, but this message got lost in ministers’ binary “shutdown or nothing” approach.’](https://media.guim.co.uk/f202520f423b3bfdcf42c0dfc38253aa87426553/0_229_2456_1474/1000.jpg)
The second takeaway is that during severe Covid testing backlogs in September 2020, the messages show Hancock personally arranging for a testing kit to be couriered to Jacob Rees-Mogg for one of his children, then sent straight to the lab for processing. This fits with the pattern we recognise from the Partygate allegations of one rule for the ruling elite (namely “me first”) and another for the British public, who had to deal with an overwhelmed NHS, delays in access to testing and medical care and repeated lockdown measures. The Tory government’s approach to taking care of their friends first is in stark contrast to Abraham Lincoln’s vision when he said “‘government of the people, by the people, for the people”. It’s clear we didn’t have a government working for the broad benefit of the British public during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The third is that given the chaotic way in which testing and closures were discussed and implemented, little planning or preparation went into dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic before late March 2020. The UK was slow off the mark with testing, and the messages strongly suggest the advice was there – it just wasn’t acted on. Helen Whateley, the social care minister, warned Hancock on 8 April 2020 that “lessons learned internationally suggest we should be testing all care home residents and staff who have had Covid contact”, regardless of symptoms, to which Hancock initially agreed. But he had rowed back on this by 14 April, and regular testing in care homes of those without symptoms didn’t begin until early July.
Meanwhile, other countries had been preparing for months by improving their diagnostics (such as South Korea in January 2020), or planning alternate venues such as stadiums and libraries to move schools safely into, in order to limit closures (such as Denmark, in February 2020). The former prime minister, Boris Johnson, initially wanted to let it rip through the country (and while facing the news of a second wave of COVID-19, his alleged comment was “let the bodies pile high”), and because this was plan A, no preparations were made as to how to suppress Covid-19 without emergency lockdown measures. This meant the UK took the “worst path”, as I told Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 News, of repeated lockdowns and economic pain and a large death toll. In April 2020, I tweeted: “At what point will the British public realise what has happened over the past 9 weeks?”
Mass testing was the best early path to avoid lockdown and suppress Covid-19, but this message got lost in ministers’ binary “shutdown or nothing” approach. This wasn’t the consensus in the scientific community. Lockdown was a late and chaotic emergency button, enforced by a lack of preparation. Delaying infections made sense in 2020, given the rapid progress being made on vaccines and antivirals – and the fact that every infection pushed into a post-vaccine era meant that survival rates would increase dramatically.
Whatever the Telegraph’s intention, these WhatsApp messages will show the British public what’s been apparent to most of the world, and to scientists advising throughout the pandemic. By acting too late, and then with its conduct throughout the pandemic, the government let us down during arguably the largest crisis of our generation. Too many people died before their time. Too many health workers worked in unsafe and risky conditions. Repeated lockdowns decimated financial stability for small and medium-sized businesses. Schools were closed in Britain for far too long because preparations weren’t made on how to keep them open safely. Scientists took the brunt of the abuse and anger from the major losers. Ministers and their friends made their own rules and made money during the crisis. And Matt Hancock launched a lucrative media career off the back of it all.
• This article was amended on 2 March 2023 to make it clear that Johnson’s alleged comment “let the bodies pile high” was said to have been made while facing the news of a second wave of Covid-19, rather than in the initial stage of the pandemic.
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
