Covid inquiry live updates: Ex-civil service chief apologises for ‘chickenpox party’ Covid remarks - BBC News
Mark Sedwill says he knew Covid was more serious than chickenpox and could see why the comments seemed "heartless".
Could first lockdown have been avoided?

That was a fascinating exchange about the timing of that first national lockdown, announced on 23 March 2020. The previous week - on 16 March - the prime minister had gone on television asking the public to avoid non-essential contact and stay at home for 14 days if they had Covid symptoms. Mark Sedwill - the top civil servant at the time - said over the next few days there was anecdotal evidence that those voluntary measures were not effective enough. "What we were hearing from focus groups was that, if the government had [really] wanted to close pubs, it would have closed pubs," he said. On 19 March the government did go further - and took the extraordinary step of ordering the close of all pubs, clubs and restaurants alongside the launch of what became the furlough scheme. It still wasn't seen as effective enough and the following Monday - 23 March - a full national lockdown was announced with a mandatory stay-at-home order. Sedwill was asked if the government could have waited a few weeks to see if the voluntary measures would have been effective. He said it was "hard to see how government could have done anything else" to bring the outbreak under control by that stage, and denied that locking down was an overreaction.