Covid inquiry: Jonathan Van-Tam says family was threatened with having throats cut during pandemic

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Testifying at the Covid inquiry on Wednesday, Sir Jonathan Van-Tam said his family had been asked to temporarily move home for their safety while police dealt with the “extremely hateful messages” – but they remained in place because “we didn’t want to leave the cat”. Sir Jonathan said that while he might have expected the “very, very intense” workload at the pandemic’s outset – which was “horrendous for all of us”, with officials working 16-hour days, seven days a week – he “did not expect my family to be threatened with having their throats cut”. open image in gallery The former deputy chief medical officer was ‘absolutely not’ consulted about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme In a blow to the prime minister, Sir Jonathan joined his colleagues in saying – contrary to Mr Johnson’s assertions to the inquiry – that he was “absolutely not” consulted on then-chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme, adding: “The first I heard about was, I think, on the TV.” “Had I been consulted I wouldn’t have made any distinction between Eat Out to Help Out and any other epidemiological event that brought different households into close contact with each other for the purposes of socialising, eating and consuming alcohol,” he said. The ex-CMO said he did not believe that “all parts of the Downing Street machinery equally were seized of the urgency” of the situation in mid-March 2020, adding: “This was a lot of people really not getting what exponential growth was actually going to mean.” Sir Chris also lamented the confusion around the concept of herd immunity, describing public remarks on the concept by some government officials as being “a long way from helpful for the public”.