Johnson defends 2020 school closures, inquiry on impact on children

Former prime minister Boris Johnson told the Covid-19 inquiry on Tuesday that his government was slow to grasp how the pandemic would affect children and defended many of the decisions taken on school closures, exam grading and reopening during 2020 and 2021. Appearing as part of the inquiry's module on the pandemic's impact on young people, Johnson said ministers and scientists did not initially know how the virus was transmitted among children and that planning for school responses was difficult amid such uncertainty.

Johnson told the inquiry that early on officials "didnt know much about the transmissibility of the disease" and that many questions were simply unknown and hard to plan for. He said the government treated school closures as a last resort while seeking to delay the peak of infections, and that it was only after scientific advice changed that closures were seen as likely to reduce spread. "Children, who are not vulnerable to Covid, were paying a huge, huge price to protect the rest of society," he said, adding that he regretted the impact on young people and wished another solution had been found.

On the controversy over exam results in summer 2020, Johnson...