Matt Hancock ‘profoundly sorry’ for Covid mistakes as Health Secretary

The former health secretary Matt Hancock has said he is ‘profoundly sorry’ for mistakes that meant the United Kingdom was not properly prepared for Covid-19.

He told the Covid inquiry that he was told by officials that the UK would be one of the best-placed countries in the world at responding  to a pandemic – which “turned out to be wrong”.

Civil servants, he said, were focusing on things like where to bury the dead rather than how to stop people dying in the first place.