Watch in full: Chris Whitty faces questions from MPs over Covid-19 response

Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty is facing questions from the Health and Social Care Committee for the inquiry into the management of the first wave of COVID-19.

Ahead of his appearance, Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and member of the Scientific Advisory Group (SAGE), has admitted that mistakes were made in the early days of the pandemic and that he regrets that SAGE did not take a harder line in handing out advice.

Addressing the committee, Mr Farrar said: "There was not enough urgency. If I look back at my time in the SAGE committee, I regret that SAGE was not more blunt in its advice, but it didn’t have a job of holding people to account for interventions that were made."

The Wellcome Trust director also said that the choice to stop community testing right at the start of the outbreak, when there was a limited number of coronavirus tests available, was a "mistake".

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