British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has finally confirmed he will meet the campaigning families who lost loved ones to the COVID-19 pandemic.
SurgeZirc UK reports that Mr Johnson will meet members of the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group at Downing Street on Tuesday, 398 days after he first promised to meet them.
The Prime Minister said he will ‘of course’ meet the bereaved families.
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Last August Johnson said he would “of course” meet with family members of those who lost fathers, mothers, uncle’s, cousins, brothers and sisters to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Prime Minister, who has found it difficult to live up to that promise was consequently branded “heartless” by the bereaved families after all efforts to meet Mr Johnson proved abortive.
The affected families, who themselves had canvassed for a public enquiry into the government’s response to the pandemic said they would use the meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson to demand a speedy investigation.
In May, Johnson announced that a public inquiry into his government’s management of the pandemic will begin in spring of 2022. According to him, the inquiry would put “the state’s actions under the microscope”.
Johnson will be joined by senior civil servants from the Cabinet Office and government’s legal department to deliberate modalities for the inquiry during the meeting on Tuesday. The bereaved families have demanded for the gathering to take place outside to give room for proper social distancing.
Co-founder of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, Jo Goodman said: “It has been over a year since the prime minister first said he would meet us and in that time over 100,000 people across the country have lost their lives with Covid.”
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Jo, whose father, Stuart died of COVID-19 last year said it had been hard to see families go through “the same pain and grief that we’ve experienced” over the past 18 months.
“We first called for a rapid review last summer so that lessons could be learnt from the deaths of our loved ones to protect others, and we can’t help but feel that if we’d been listened to then, other lives might have been spared,” Ms Goodman said.
“We hope that the prime minister will listen to us tomorrow, and start the process to begin the inquiry immediately, whilst ensuring that the perspective of bereaved families is at its heart,” she added.