22 November 2023 , 23:07
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Sir Jonathan Van Tam received anonymous threats to cut his families’ throats during the pandemic, the Covid-19 Inquiry has heard.
The ex-Deputy Chief Medical Officer also criticised Rishi Sunak’s controversial Eat Out to Help Out scheme, saying he only found out about it on TV.
Sir Jonathan, 58, who became a well-known face at Downing Street briefings, revealed he was asked by police to move out of his home for his family’s safety.
He said: “I might have expected that if a crisis happened it was my responsibility to bear that kind of workload.
“I did not expect my family to be threatened with having their throats cut.
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“I did not expect the police to have to say when you move out in the middle of the night, or in the middle of the evening, ‘do you mind moving out for a few days while we look at this and potentially make some arrests?’”
Nicknamed “JVT”, the Boston United FC fan became a voice of calm authority in the pandemic.
But behind the jovial TV persona, he said his seven-day-a-week workload – at times he was doing 16-hour days – was “horrendous” and said hate messages made him consider his position.
Sir Jonathan Van Tam, who was the UK's Deputy Chief Medical Officer, revealed how the lives of his families were threated at the UK Covid-19 inquiry (PA)He said: “We didn’t move out because of the cat as we didn’t want to leave the cat. It was a very stressful time indeed. My family didn’t sign up for that.” He added: “I only made this point because I’m so worried that if there’s a future crisis, people will not want to sign up for these roles… because of the implications that come with them.”
Sir Jonathan added that “the vast, vast, vast majority of the public who, when I meet them, are supportive and grateful, and I deeply appreciate that”.
The leading expert in infectious diseases stepped down as England’s deputy chief medical officer in 2022.
He told the probe that the NHS would “inevitably be broken” without national lockdowns.
When asked about then-Chancellor Mr Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme, he said: “The first I heard about it was on the TV.
“Had I been consulted… I would have said ‘this is exactly encouraging what we’ve been trying to suppress’. So it didn’t feel sensible to me.”
He appeared after his former senior medic, England’s Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty, whom he had warned of the danger of Covid-19 early on.
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The friends are said to have disagreed over how quick to act in the first wave, with Prof Whitty taking a more cautious approach to implementing a lockdown.
Questioned about this, Sir Jonathan said: “My instincts were telling me that this was going to cause us real trouble and be a pandemic.”
The inquiry continues.