Boris Johnson Covid Inquiry live: ex-Prime Minister gives evidence on coronavirus pandemic - latest updates

Mr Keith KC told Johnson that the former PM had "warned against" taking unecessary action against Covid-19. "You knew it had spead, there was a dawning realisation," the lawyer told him.

Mr Johnson said: "I was agnostic - I took what Matt [Hancock] had to say very seriously but on the other hand I was waiting for the advice to change.

"If we had fully understood the speed of transmission and the infection fatality rate, I think clearly we would have acted immediately to accelerate test and trace, diagnostics and PPE. The panic level would have been much higher."

When it became apparent that Covid-19 would "sweep the world", Boris Johnson's priority was on communications and PR - not on preventing infections.

That is according to WhatsApp messages between him and his top adivsers.

He told the panel: "When you read that an Asiatic pandemic is about to sweep the world, you think you've heard it before. That was the problem. It would be fair to say that the scientific community within Whitehall at that stage was not telling us this was something that would require urgent and immediate action.

"Although we could see the mathematical implications of the reasonable worst case scenario, the problem was that we didn't think that was very likely to happen."

A number of provinces in Italy were hit hard by Covid-19 in February; Boris Johnson saw the impact but work against the virus did not accelerate action plans.

"The scenes from Italy really rattled me," Johnson confessed. "I saw somewhere that the fatality rate was eight per cent because they had an elderly population. I look at all this with horror now - we should collectively had twigged a lot sooner. I should have twigged."

Mr Keith KC asked: "With hindsight do you accept the level of seriousness might not have been sufficiently communicated by you?"

"I think I did what I could," said Johnson. "If you exclude borders - and test and trace is not as good as it was cracked up to be - and you're told you had ample supplies of PPE, I find it hard to conceptualise what we should be doing. I don't think even the word lockdown had yet emerged."

There was a viewpoint among top scientists in the UK that intervention against Covid-19, including social distancing and masking, should not take place too early.

This was because they thought the British public would become "tired" of these measures.

Mr Johnson said: "It was the pervailing view for some time. People get fed up if you have to keep doing it, so my anxiety was that without a vaccination programme what would happen if we went into a lockdown early."

Boris Johnson did not consider going against the scientific advice around lockdowns, after chief scientists called for caution on pulling the trigger.

"I'm afraid it's what happened," Johnson said. "I can't say I would have gone earlier becuase that's the advice I was given. To do it [lockdown] at the drop of a hat is very logistically difficult.

"I don't remember saying to myself 'this is so bad, I must ignore the scientific advice'. I didn't do that and perhaps with hindsight I should have done, but I just don't know the answer."

Time for lunch - the inquiry will recommence at 1.40pm.

Good afternoon, this is Ralph Blackburn, NationalWorld's politics editor based in Westminster. I'll be bringing you all of Boris' evidence from this afternoon.

You may remember Johnson's famous comments, saying he "shook hands with everybody" at the Royal Free Hospital, in North London, in early March 2020. That was on the same day that Sage warned the government warned against handshake and hugging.

He said today: “I shouldn’t have done that, in retrospect, and I should have been more precautionary – but I wanted to be encouraging to people.” Johnson claimed he was not aware of official advice advising against greeting people with a handshake.