Boris Johnson Promises A Memorial To "Loved Ones We Have Lost" During The Pandemic
3 min read
The government will create a "fitting and permanent memorial" to the thousands of people in the UK who have died after catching the coronavirus, Boris Johnson has said.
The Prime Minister on Tuesday led a Downing Steet press conference alongside Chief Medical Office Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance on the one-year anniversary of the UK first going into lockdown.
In a extaordinary TV address on Monday, 23 March 2020, Johnson told the public to stay at home and only leave for essential reasons as the virus started to spread across the country.
Over 126,000 people in the UK have died after catching the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, with many more hospitalised and others still suffering from the effects of the illness months after catching it.
The country held a minute's silence at midday to remember those who people in the UK have lost their lives.
Reflecting on that evening early last year and the months that followed, the Prime Minsiter said it was "unlike any other struggle in my lifetime in that our entire population has been engaged".
Fighting the virus in the early stages of the pandemic last year was "like fighting in the dark against a callous and invisible enemy," Johnson said, "until science helped us to turn the light on and gain the upper hand".
He said: "When I asked you to go into lockdown exactly a year ago it seemed incredible that in the 21st Century this was the only way to fight a new respiratory disease — to stay at home, to avoid human contact, to shun so many of the patterns of behaviour that are most natural and obvious to all of us.
"But we did it together to protect the NHS and to save lives.
"And for the entire British people it has been an epic of endurance and privation, of children’s birthday parties cancelled, of weddings postponed, of family gatherings of all kinds simply deleted from the diary.
"And worst of all in that time.
"We’ve suffered so many losses and for so many people our grief has been made more acute because we have not been able to see our loved ones in their final days to hold their hands or even to mourn them together".
Labour today called for a public inquiry into the government's handling of the pandemic to begin in late June when the roadmap for lifting lockdown restrictions is expected to come to an end.
Johnson said there "are many things we wished we’d known and done differently at the time", and admitted there were lessons to be learned, no least over the "biggest false assumption [around] asymptomatic transmission," but stopped short of committing to an inquiry.
Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said bereaved relatives "want an inquiry because they want to understand what happened and whether anything more could have been done – but also, and I think this is probably the strongest argument, the lessons to be learned, because this is unlikely to be the last virus or disease that comes our way.”
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