London, Thanasis Gavos

In an episodic manner, the long-awaited testimony of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the handling of the coronavirus pandemic to the independent commission led by Baroness Hallett began in London this morning..

While he was apologizing for the “pain and loss” of the relatives of the victims of COVID-19, four members of the audience began to fight him and were escorted out of the room.

One of them held up a poster that read “The dead can’t hear your apologies».

Mr Johnson cited a technical problem for failing to provide the committee with around 5,000 messages he exchanged with officials during the pandemic via the WhatsApp app.

He was then asked about the admission in the written statement he submitted to the inquiry about “undoubted” wrongdoing in the handling of the pandemic. When asked by the committee’s lawyer Hugo Keith what those mistakes were, the former prime minister replied that he was referring to general communication errors by Downing Street in the direction of measures to deal with the coronavirus.

Mr Johnson said that responsibility for any mistakes that may have been made ultimately rested with the Prime Minister and that he takes personal responsibility for them.

When asked if in retrospect he thinks his government could have reacted better, he said that “in hindsight it is perhaps easy to see that some things could have been done differently”. He said, however, that he could not answer and was not sure whether the government’s decisions had led to a higher death toll.

He insisted that statistically the UK did not record a significantly higher number of excess deaths than other European countries.

He also admitted that the decision for the first lockdown in March 2020 was not easy and that there were strong arguments against such a decision.

Asked about the criticism leveled at him in their own testimony by other key figures in the pandemic, such as chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance’s “indecisiveness”, Mr Johnson said he did not see the questioning of his abilities as something remarkable, as it was a special period with continuous discussions.

The British former prime minister’s testimony continues until late Wednesday afternoon and will conclude late Thursday afternoon.

The independent commission under Baroness Hallett will take evidence until 2026, with the aim not to assign blame but to draw lessons from the handling of the pandemic.