Thread by @Telegraph

🔴 NEW: The former health secretary rejected cutting the 14-day self-isolation period, as he feared it would ‘imply we’d been getting it wrong’

Read this front page story here ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…

#TheLockdownFiles #LockdownFiles

🔴 At points during the pandemic, more than 600,000 people a week who had been in close proximity to a Covid case were told to quarantine for 10 days

🔴 In total, the policy resulted in more than 20 million people - a third of the entire population - being told to self-isolate, regardless of whether they had symptoms

Read more ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…

📲 Now, WhatsApp messages seen by The Telegraph show that a proposal to replace that with five days of testing had been discussed as early as November 2020 - but was not put in place

The full article ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…

🔴 The Lockdown Files show that Hancock, was told by England’s Chief Medical Officer that they could change the policy in “favour of testing for 5 days in lieu of isolation”. At that stage, the self-isolation period was 14 days

Read more ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…

📲 On Aug 5, messages from the then health secretary to the “MH Top Team” WhatsApp group appear primarily concerned with the self-isolation restrictions placed on people returning to the UK from abroad, rather than those on close contacts of people infected with the virus

🔴 When Mr Hancock returned to the issue two weeks later, this time he asked only about the policy that applied to “high net worth” business people

Read more ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…

#TheLockdownFiles #LockdownFiles

🔴 By the time the self-isolation requirement was removed on Feb 24 2022, 26.4 million people had been told to self-isolate in England

Read in full here ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/0…

#TheLockdownFiles #LockdownFiles