UK's infected blood scandal: Probe finds 'chilling' cover-up

An inquiry into Britain's decadeslong contaminated blood scandal slammed the UK state and found evidence of a "chilling" cover-up, a watershed moment for the country after what's widely seen as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the National Health Service.

Brian Langstaff, chairman of the Infected Blood Inquiry, described the scandal as a "calamity" that should have been avoided and involved "systemic, collective and individual failures to deal ethically, appropriately, and quickly, with the risk of infections being transmitted in blood." "The scale of what happened is horrifying," Langstaff said in the report published on Monday. The cover-up was "chilling in its implications," he said. "To save face and to save expense, there has been a hiding of much of the truth." More than 30,000 people were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s after receiving treatments with blood products contaminated with deadly viruses. A public inquiry was only announced in 2017.