London, Thanasis Gavos

Behind-the-scenes details of then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in Britain have been revealed by the Daily Telegraph, based on 100,000 WhatsApp messages from that period.

The messages show that Mr Hancock rejected in April 2020 a recommendation by chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty to test “everyone who goes into nursing homes” for Covid and isolate them from other residents until the results are available.

The minister said in his message that he preferred – and eventually did – to make the tests mandatory only for those moving to nursing homes from hospitals and not from the community, as this would “muddy the waters”.

He also expressed concern that increasing testing in nursing homes would not meet the goal he had set, arbitrarily according to his critics, of 100,000 tests a day.

The messages also reveal, among other things, that in September 2020, amid shortages of available tests, an adviser to Mr Hancock arranged for a test to be sent to the home of Tory leader Jacob Rees-Mogg for one of his children.

It also shows Mr Hancock’s obsession with reaching the target of 100,000 tests a day, which he achieved by including tests that had simply been sent to recipients.

The messages were given to the Telegraph by journalist and well-known anti-lockdown campaigner Isabelle Oakeshott, with whom Mr Hancock himself had shared the messages as she helped him write a book about the pandemic period.

A source close to the former minister accused the reporter of breaching a legal confidentiality agreement and “outrageous” behaviour.

He also questioned the paper’s conclusions, arguing that some critical messages are being missed. In particular, it is claimed that the Telegraph report deliberately omitted messages showing that Matt Hancock accepted and supported the chief medical officer’s recommendations, but was then told that it was not possible to examine all those transferred to nursing homes.

Ms Oakeshott in an article in the Telegraph defends her move by writing that she did it because the official inquiry into the handling of the pandemic could take years to complete. “We cannot wait any longer for answers,” he writes, speaking of serving the public interest.