High levels of obesity and diabetes in the UK contributed to a “bad outcome from COVID”, a former chief medical officer has told the official inquiry.
While giving evidence, Professor Dame Sally Davies came close to tears when recalling “harrowing” cases she had been told about.
Discussing the impact the virus had on the UK, Dame Sally said there was a “lack of resilience in the public’s health”.
Key takeaways from the COVID inquiry as it happened today
She explained: “One reason we had a bad outcome from COVID, and I presume would get from flu, is because of what you have been told are health inequalities.
“I would talk about the lack of resilience in the public’s health: 25% of children in year six are obese; 60% of adults are obese or overweight; we have high levels of diabetes.”
In order to improve health outcomes, she said it is about the “structure of our society and how to make the healthy choice the easy choice, whether it’s activity or what we eat”.
Dame Sally also apologised to those who lost loved ones. “Maybe this is the moment to say how sorry I am to the relatives who lost their families,” she said.
“It wasn’t just the deaths, it was the way they died. It was horrible.”
Dame Sally added: “I heard a lot about it from my daughter on the front line as a young doctor in Scotland.
“It was harrowing and it remains horrible.”
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Now Master at Trinity College Cambridge, Dame Sally was England’s chief medical officer between 2010 and 2019.
Asked whether there was a “bias” towards preparing for a flu pandemic, she said there was “groupthink” about influenza, adding: “It wasn’t just us, this was the whole global north – the western world thought that flu was the thing to focus on.”
There have been four flu pandemics in the past century, she said, adding: “We will have more – it’s only a question of when.”
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She continued: “So for me the issue is not should we not prepare for flu, we must prepare for flu.
“The question is what else we do over and above that?
“Clearly we could have done more thinking.”
