(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Covid inquiry: Pandemic response in Wales ‘tantamount to chaos’ [1] [] Date: 2024-02 Families who lost loved ones to coronavirus have hit out at the Welsh government’s response, which lagged behind approaches in the rest of the UK. Addressing the UK’s Covid-19 inquiry, which has restarted in Cardiff this week, the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru (CBFJC) group took aim at discrepancies that meant people faced vastly different restrictions depending which side of the border they were on. And in some cases it was suggested the devolved administration took weeks or even months to catch up on guidance implemented elsewhere. “It sounds like they were caught with their trousers down,” said Elizabeth Grant, whose mother, Betty, died aged 86 in the early months of the pandemic. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now “And when they realised the impact of the virus on Welsh shores, they sat on their hands.” Asked about the difficulty of navigating different sets of rules in England and Wales, Grant – who at the time lived in Bath, in England, while her parents were in Chepstow, in Wales – added: “It was tantamount to chaos. “Yes, there was confusion and [it was] very difficult to get, when you’re in England… any information [about] what was happening in Wales.” The inquiry’s module 2B is scheduled to run into the second week of March, focusing on the Welsh government’s response to the pandemic. Some 12,500 people have so far died in Wales with Covid as a factor listed on their death certificates. The CBFJC group has highlighted hospital ventilators, access to personal protective equipment (PPE), and transfers of patients between hospitals and care homes among the issues it wants to see covered. Other areas to be raised during this phase of the inquiry include mandatory Covid testing for patients being discharged from hospital, which was introduced in Wales almost two weeks after the same measure was implemented in England. Funerals in Wales permitted just five attendees, compared with ten in England. Yesterday, as the inquiry opened in Cardiff, a row once again erupted over government WhatsApp messages. Nia Gowman, a lawyer acting for CBFJC, accused senior figures in the devolved administration of “suspiciously and systematically deleting communications” related to their handling of the pandemic. Earlier this year, the erasure of dialogue between officials became a running topic during the inquiry’s previous module, 2A, examining the Scottish government’s response. This included evidence showing Jason Leitch, Scotland’s national clinical director, had described deleting work-related WhatsApp messages as a “pre-bed ritual” during the pandemic. In one exchange, he issued colleagues with a “gentle reminder” to delete such communication logs, while a separate thread included a reminder from another official that messages would be “discoverable under FOI”, referring to freedom of information law. Leitch denied ever deleting messages, or advising anyone else to do so, with the intention of preventing it being recovered via a Freedom of Information request. UK government ministers in Westminster have also admitted deleting WhatsApp messages sent during the pandemic. But evidence from Downing Street figures to the inquiry has so far heavily featured records of conversations via WhatsApp, such as key Boris Johnson adviser Simon Case describing the government as a “terrible, tragic joke”. The inquiry continues. openDemocracy is fundraising to pay reporters to cover every day of the public hearings. Please support us by donating here. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/covid-19-inquiry-wales-cymru-chaos-bereaved-families/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/