Pandemic as deadly as Covid-19 'a certainty', says Whitty

Another pandemic as big as the Covid crisis that killed 7 million people worldwide was "a certainty", Prof Sir Chris Whitty warned yesterday, as he said the UK's lack of intensive care capacity for the sickest patients was a "political choice".

- Andrew Gregory

The NHS faced an "absolutely catastrophic situation" when the virus first hit in 2020, but it could have been "substantially worse" if the country had not gone into lockdown, England's chief medical officer said.

"We have to assume a future pandemic on this scale will occur," he told the public inquiry into Covid-19.

"That's a certainty." It would also be "foolish" not to assume that asymptomatic transmission of a deadly virus would happen again, he added.

The warning from Whitty came after a doctor repeatedly broke down in tears at the inquiry while describing how the Covid crisis for NHS staff had been like having to respond to a "terrorist attack every day", with infected patients "raining from the sky".

Prof Kevin Fong, a former clinical adviser in emergency preparedness, resilience and response at NHS England who was on shift during the 7/7 London bombings, said the scale of death in hospitals at the height of the pandemic had been "shocking" and "truly astounding".