Covid lockdown ‘damaged an entire generation’ of children claims former health chief in harrowing statement
A socially distanced childhood
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The predecessor to Professor Sir Chris Whitty has warned the Covid inquiry that children are still suffering the effects of national lockdowns.
Professor Dame Sally Davies also admitted that “no one thought about lockdown” in the pandemic response planning before the outbreak of Covid.
Dame Sally, who was chief medical officer between 2011 and 2019, has highlighted the impact lockdown policies had on children, despite being in favour of the first lockdown.
Now the master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Dame Sally has witnessed first hand the damage done by the restrictions placed on children.
Professor Dame Sally Davies was the chief medical officer from 2011 to 2019 Dame Sally told the inquiry: “It’s clear that no one thought about lockdown. I still think we should have locked down, although a week earlier.
“But during that we should have thought: do we need to [think] further?
“The damage I now see to children and students from Covid, and the educational impact, tells me that education has a terrific amount of work to do.”
She added: “We have damaged a generation and it is awful as head of a college in Cambridge watching these young people struggle.
Dame Sally apologised to the families of Covid bereaved
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“I know in pre-schools they haven’t learned how to socialise and play properly, they haven’t learned how to read at school. We must have plans for them.”
A study conducted by The Lancet found lockdown had created a “staggering rise” in eating disorders amongst teenage girls, with cases surging by 42 per cent.
Dame Sally also told the inquiry that she believed Government would have benefited from listening to “a second group of experts” when weighing up the wider social and economic impact of the restrictive measures.
This statement came following the evidence provided by former chancellor, George Osborne, who suggested the West blindly followed Beijing’s lead in locking citizens down.
George Osborne suggested the UK copied China in its lockdown approach
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Osborne said: “I think the Chinese lockdown is what gives the rest of the world the idea of a lockdown, and it’s the overwhelming of the hospital system in northern Italy that leads all Western governments to reach basically the same conclusion.”
The first national lockdown ran from March 2020 through to June, with the second announced in November that year and a third in January 2021.
The inquiry also heard evidence on the UK’s pandemic preparedness from the former prime minister David Cameron, who conceded that his government had broadly focused on preparing for an influenza outbreak rather than a virus variant.
On preparedness, Dame Sally said: “I would prefer to have planned to not get us to that stage, but we didn’t recognise that it could – something could get to that stage and then how would we manage it.”
Overcome with emotion, she added: “Maybe this is the moment to say how sorry I am to the relatives who lost their families.
“It wasn’t just the deaths, it was the way they died. It was horrible. It was harrowing and it remains horrible.”
The inquiry resumes today and will hear evidence from Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor and former health secretary between 2012 and 2018.
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