Boris Johnson expressed "how sorry" he is for the "loss and the suffering" of Covid victims, while his apology was rejected by families who said "the dead won’t hear your apologies".
On the first of two days of evidence at the Covid-19 Inquiry, the former prime minister said he looks back "in horror" while admitting his government seemed "oblivious" to the severity of the virus in February 2020.
We "inevitably" made mistakes, he admitted, before stressing he did his "level best" and accepts full personal responsibility for every decision that was made.
The ex-PM didn’t deny asking then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak why they were "damaging [the] economy for people who will die anyway soon", labelling his language "an indication of the cruelty of the choice that we faced" during the pandemic.
Mr Johnson, whose premiership in Number 10 was defined by coronavirus, is facing a mammoth 48-hour evidence session, where he faces claims that he was slow to impose lockdowns, was "bamboozled" by the science and wanted to "let the bodies pile high".
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