Former British chief medical officer says lockdown ‘damaged a generation’
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Lockdown “damaged a generation” of children, the country’s former top doctor has told the Covid inquiry.
Prof Dame Sally Davies, who was chief medical officer for England from 2011 to 2019, before Prof Sir Chris Whitty, helped the Government plan for a future pandemic.
She admitted to the official inquiry that “no one thought about lockdown”.
Now the master at Trinity College, Cambridge, she said she had seen the damage done to children and that it had been awful “watching young people struggle”.
It comes as a new study, published in The Lancet, suggested that lockdown fuelled a “staggering rise” in eating disorders among teenage girls, with cases surging by 42 per cent.
Dame Sally told the inquiry: “It’s clear that no one thought about lockdown. I still think we should have locked down, although a week earlier.
“But during that we should have thought: do we need to [think] further?
“The damage I now see to children and students from Covid, and the educational impact, tells me that education has a terrific amount of work to do.”
She added: “We have damaged a generation and it is awful as head of a college in Cambridge watching these young people struggle.
“I know in pre-schools they haven’t learned how to socialise and play properly, they haven’t learned how to read at school. We must have plans for them.”
