Five weeks, five missed COBRA meetings. As the coronavirus crisis grew, what was the government

really doing? And where was Boris Johnson?

And it wasn't until the 2nd of March that he actually held his first COBRA meeting on the coronavirus.

And we know now that by then the virus had taken hold across the country.

Britain used to have a world-class system for dealing with a pandemic.

So what happened?

Britain just took its eye off the ball and just didn't put enough effort and enough money into making sure that our

defences were the highest possible level that they could be.

The Sunday Times Insight investigation exposed a

catalog of failures and missed opportunities in the government's response

to COVID-19. It was an investigation which led to an unprecedented response from the government, which we will address in this

podcast.

You're listening to stories of our times.

I'm Manveen Rana.

Today, 38 days when Britain's sleep walked into disaster. This is a passenger announcement. You can now book your train on Uber and get 10% back in credits to spend on Uber eats, so you can order your own fries instead of eating everyone else's.

Trains, now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app.

And now as ever to the front pages.

The Sunday Times Insight team has written this huge long write-through, basically about the government's failures in handling the coronavirus crisis.

And taken all in all, it is a pretty devastating piece of journalism.

It's a brilliant piece of journalism, analyzing those

emergency meetings in January and February for Boris Johnson didn't attend any of them.

According to a report... Johnson didn't attend any of them.

...