Covid inquiry: Boris Johnson's WhatsApp messages "not recoverable" if they were deleted

WhatsApp messages sent to and from the ex-PM's phone when Covid hit have gone missing.
David George
By David George
4th Oct 2023, 3:40pm
We will all suffer in Northern Ireland after October 1 as a result of the actions of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. Picture Leon Neal/PA WireWe will all suffer in Northern Ireland after October 1 as a result of the actions of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. Picture Leon Neal/PA Wire
We will all suffer in Northern Ireland after October 1 as a result of the actions of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. Picture Leon Neal/PA Wire

WhatsApp messages that "may have been deleted" from ex-prime minister Boris Johnson's phone may be impossible to retrieve.

In the second phase of the UK's Covid-19 inquiry, it was revealed that Johnson might have deleted messages between him and his top advisors between January and June 2020 - when Covid-19 was in its infancy and the immediate start of the UK's lockdowns. The inquiry is exploring how the government responded to the pandemic and whether any lessons can be learned from how it was handled.

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Yesterday (04 October) the inquiry was told that although the ex-PM had downloaded his phone, messages from the "cruical period" of 31 January to 7 June 2020 cannot be recovered.

We will all suffer in Northern Ireland after October 1 as a result of the actions of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. (Picture: Leon Neal/PA Wire)We will all suffer in Northern Ireland after October 1 as a result of the actions of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. (Picture: Leon Neal/PA Wire)
We will all suffer in Northern Ireland after October 1 as a result of the actions of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. (Picture: Leon Neal/PA Wire)

Pete Weatherby KC, representing Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, suggested that experts should be commissioned "to see why these messages cannot be retrived, and whether they may have been deleted."

National World reached out to Meta, which powers WhatsApp, to see if deleted WhatsApp messages could be retrieved in any way, and were redirected to the app's help centre.

According to this WhatsApp guide, if a user chooses for a message to be deleted for everyone in a chat, "messages deleted by a group admin are not recoverable and can't be appealed."

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The FAQ page continues: "Recipients using WhatsApp for iOS might still have media you sent saved to their Photos, even after the message is deleted from the WhatsApp chat. Recipients might see your message before it's deleted or if deletion wasn’t successful.

"WhatsApp automatically stores your chats daily to your phone’s WhatsApp database. This includes a complete chat history in order to recover them in the event of corruption. We recommend using Google Drive to backup your entire chat and media history.

"To restore chats stored on your phone’s WhatsApp database, you'll need a computer, file explorer, available storage or SD Card to transfer the files from your old phone to your new phone."

Related topics:Covid-19GovernmentPandemicWhatsAppBoris Johnson

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