Latest updates: prime minister’s former top adviser offers testimony including on mistakes he claims No 10 made as coronavirus hit Britain last year
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Cummings says on 25 January he sent a text to Matt Hanock, the health secretary, about coronavirus. He asked what what been done to prepare for something like an ebola outbreak. He says Hancock told him they had full plans, and that they were stress testing.
Cummings says he replied, “Great”. He told Hancock he was reading about what the CDC was doing in America.
Q: In your No 10 press conference last year you said you had warned of coronavirus for some time. You said you had mentioned this previously on your blog. So, when Wuhan declared an emergency, did you think you had thought about this in advance.
Dominic Cummings says senior ministers and senior advisers like him “fell disastrously short of the standards the public had a right to expect in a crisis like this”.
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