Covid inquiry live: children paid ‘huge price’ to protect rest of society in pandemic, says Johnson

Former prime minister grilled over pandemic’s impact on young people and says he wishes ‘another solution’ could have been found over school closures

Former prime minister Boris Johnson tries to give the inquiry context around the decision making on the closure of educational settings. He says:

Don’t forget that we didn’t know the effect this disease had on kids. We didn’t know much about the transmissibility of the disease. There were all sorts of things that were simply unknown and difficult to plan for. And the thing was moving very fast.

And from the point of view of No 10, we were focused very much on trying to stave off, trying to avoid an appalling public health crisis, and we were focused on getting enough ventilators, on getting enough PPE, trying to avoid a significant number of casualties, and I think it’s important for the inquiry to focus, to remember that at the time that the school closures were first mentioned, they were seen as something you put in at the peak of the pandemic, and we didn’t think we were yet at the peak of the pandemic.