Victoria Macdonald , Health and Social Care Editor

The Covid Inquiry was set up to investigate a whole range of issues, from how well-prepared the country was to deal with a pandemic, to the impact of specific decisions and Government policies.

It’s been an emotional day at the Covid Inquiry – the second day of Boris Johnson’s testimony.

People all over the country will have been watching Mr Johnson’s testimony, the majority of whom were affected in some way by how the government handled the pandemic. 

Victims and families caught up in the infected blood scandal have told this programme they have little faith in the Government to bring forward compensation.

There were tears in the Covid Inquiry gallery today as bereaved families heard former health secretary Matt Hancock defend the decision to discharge hospital patients into care homes – without testing them. 

The former health secretary Matt Hancock has told the Covid inquiry the lockdown should have begun three weeks earlier, but claimed there was a toxic culture in Number 10 which wanted to “find people to blame”. Mr Hancock also claimed he wasn’t told about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme until the day it was announced.

The UK’s chief scientific adviser says the government’s failure to act quickly when warned about rising Covid cases in autumn 2020 led to preventable deaths, and said advice from scientists was ignored by the government.

Professor Sir Chris Whitty has told the Covid Inquiry he was never told about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, despite Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak saying the country’s top scientists were consulted. 

England’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty has been giving evidence at the Covid inquiry, where he was repeatedly asked about whether more could have been done to halt the rapid spread of the virus when the pandemic first began.

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak suggested Covid should let “rip” – even though people would die from the virus, according to evidence at the public inquiry from the UK’s former chief scientist. 

The families and former patients of a mental health unit in Teesside say they were left without support when it was forced to shut down over safety concerns.

The UK’s medicines watchdog has approved a groundbreaking gene therapy treatment for sickle cell disease – which could transform the lives of thousands of people with the debilitating blood disorder. 

The number of people waiting for hospital treatment in England has hit another record high, with the backlog for treatment now standing at 7.8 million. That backlog has increased every month since January – when the prime minister promised to reduce it.

People with autism and learning difficulties should be moved from institutions into the community, the government promised a decade ago.

Campaigners and senior politicians are angry that the government appears to have shelved long-promised legislation to modernise the Mental Health Act. They’d been calling for a new law to outlaw inappropriate detention of people with learning disabilities. A white paper was published nearly three years ago.