Matt Hancock says ministers were told COVID could kill 820,000 people in UK

Published

3 years ago

December 5, 2022

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Matt Hancock has said he was warned the COVID pandemic could kill hundreds of thousands of people in the UK two months before the country was put into lockdown and claims ministers “did not really believe it”.

The former health secretary said the chief medical officer for England, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, informed him in January 2020 that, in a “reasonable worst case scenario”, as many as 820,000 could die.

Mr Hancock said when he passed on the warning to other ministers at a cabinet meeting three days later, the reaction was “shrug shrug” as they did not really believe it.

The details are revealed in Mr Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story Of Britain’s Battle Against Covid, serialised in the Daily Mail and The Mail+.

He said that on 17 January, Sir Whitty warned that there was a “50:50” chance that the virus would reach Britain and laid out the figures.

“The whole room froze. We are looking at a human catastrophe on a scale not seen here for a century.”

However, when he shared the warning with a Brexit Day meeting of the Cabinet on 31 January, he said it was met largely with indifference.

“The reaction was somewhat ‘shrug shrug’ – essentially because they didn’t really believe it. I am constantly feeling that others, who aren’t focused on this every day, are weeks behind what’s going on,” he said.

Johnson: ‘It will probably go away’

Mr Hancock also suggested that Boris Johnson had been reluctant to engage on the issue.

When he first raised the outbreak in China with him in early January, his response had been: “You keep an eye on it. It will probably go away.”

A month later he said he warned Mr Johnson that while it might still be possible to contain the virus, it was “more likely we’re going down”. The reply, he said, was simply: “Bash on.”

More than 200,000 people with COVID have died in the UK, figures show.

The details were released as Mr Hancock returned to Westminster for the first time after his controversial appearance on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!

Hancock defends release of care home residents

Mr Hancock also defended his handling of the controversial decision to release care home residents from hospital without testing, which was blamed for thousands of deaths.

On 2 April, he noted: “The tragic but honest truth is we don’t have enough testing capacity to check anyway. It’s an utter nightmare, but it’s the reality.”

In April, the High Court ruled the government acted unlawfully by discharging untested hospital patients into care homes during the early stages of the pandemic.

The first national lockdown began on 23 March 2020.

World

Every shop and home burned or ransacked: The Syrian city engulfed in tribal violence

Published

18 hours ago

July 19, 2025

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Every shop and home burned or ransacked: The Syrian city engulfed in tribal violence

The Syrian presidency has announced it’s assembling a special taskforce to try to stop nearly a week of sectarian clashes in the southern Druze city of Sweida.

The presidency called for restraint on all sides and said it is making strenuous efforts to “stop the fighting and curb the violations that threaten the security of the citizens and the safety of society”.

By early Saturday morning, a ceasefire had been confirmed by the US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, who posted on X that Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a ceasefire supported by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.

The post went on to state that this agreement had the support of “Turkey, Jordan and its neighbours” and called upon the Druze, Bedouins, and Sunni factions to put down their arms.

Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford reports from the road leading to Sweida, the city that has become the epicentre of Syria’s sectarian violence.

For the past 24 hours, we’ve watched as Syria‘s multiple Arab tribes began mobilising in the Sweida province to help defend their Bedouin brethren.

Thousands travelled from multiple different Syrian areas and had reached the edge of Sweida city by Friday nightfall after a day of almost non-stop violent clashes and killings.

“We have come to protect the [Arab] Bedouin women and children who are being terrorised by the Druze,” they told us.

Every shop and every home in the streets leading up to Sweida city has been burned or ransacked, the contents destroyed or looted.

We saw tribal fighters loading the back of pickup trucks and driving away from the city with vehicles packed with looted goods from Druze homes.

Several videos posted online showed violence against the Druze, including one where tribal fighters force three men to throw themselves off a high-rise balcony and are seen being shot as they do so.

Doctors at the nearby community hospital in Buser al Harir said there had been a constant stream of casualties being brought in. As we watched, another dead fighter was carried out of an ambulance.

The medics estimated there had been more than 600 dead in their area alone. “The youngest child who was killed was a one-and-a-half-year-old baby,” one doctor told us.

The violence is the most dangerous outbreak of sectarian clashes since the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime last December – and the most serious challenge for the new leader to navigate.

The newly brokered deal is aimed at ending the sectarian killings and restoring some sort of stability in a country which is emerging from more than a decade of civil war.

World

Israel and Syria agree to ceasefire, says US ambassador to Turkey

Published

21 hours ago

July 19, 2025

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Israel and Syria agree to ceasefire, says US ambassador to Turkey

Israel and Syria have agreed to a ceasefire, the US ambassador to Turkey has said.

Several hundred people have reportedly been killed this week in the south of Syria in violence involving local fighters, government authorities and Bedouin tribes.

As the violence escalated in the southern province of Sweida, Israel launched airstrikes, including attacks on Wednesday on the defence ministry in Damascus and a target near the presidential palace.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said it aimed to protect Syrian Druze – part of a small but influential minority that also has followers in Lebanon and Israel.

In a post on X, the US ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, said Israel and Syria had agreed to a ceasefire supported by Turkey, Jordan and others.

“We call upon Druze, Bedouins, and Sunnis to put down their weapons and together with other minorities build a new and united Syrian identity,” Mr Barrack said in a post on X.

The Israeli embassy in Washington and Syrian Consulate in Canada did not immediately comment or respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency.

The ceasefire announcement came after the US worked to put an end to the conflict, with secretary of state Marco Rubio saying on Wednesday that steps had been agreed to end a “troubling and horrifying situation”.

After Israel warned it would destroy forces attacking Syrian Druze, Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa told the minority group in a televised statement on Thursday that “we reject any attempt to drag you into hands of an external party”.

He then claimed Israel has “consistently targeted our stability and created discord among us since the fall of the former regime”.

It comes after the United Nations’ migration agency said earlier on Friday that nearly 80,000 people had been displaced in the region since violence broke out on Sunday.

It also said that essential services, including water and electricity, had collapsed in Sweida, telecommunications systems were widely disrupted, and health facilities in Sweida and Daraa were under severe strain.

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World

‘Horrific incident’ at sheriff training facility in LA – at least three people dead

Published

1 day ago

July 18, 2025

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'Horrific incident' at sheriff training facility in LA - at least three people dead

At least three people have been killed after a “horrific incident” at a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department training facility, officials have said.

A spokesperson for the department said there was an explosion at the Biscailuz Center Academy Training in east LA.

The incident was reported at around 7.30am local time (3.30pm UK time).

Aerial footage from local channel KABC-TV suggests the blast happened in a parking lot filled with sheriff patrol cars and box trucks.

Attorney general Pam Bondi wrote on X: “I just spoke to @USAttyEssayli about what appears to be a horrific incident that killed at least three at a law enforcement training facility in Los Angeles.

“Our federal agents are at the scene and we are working to learn more.”

California congressman Jimmy Sanchez said the explosion had “claimed the lives of at least three deputies”.

“My condolences to the families and everyone impacted by this loss,” he said.

The attorney general said in a follow-up post that agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are “on the ground to support”.

The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said the LAPD bomb squad has also responded to the scene.

“The thoughts of all Angelenos are with all of those impacted by this blast,” she said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has been briefed on the incident, his press office said in a post on X.

“The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is in contact with the Sheriff’s Department and closely monitoring the situation, and has offered full state assistance,” it added.

The cause of the explosion is being investigated.

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