Bereaved families of Covid-19 told their devastating stories of losing loved ones during the pandemic.
In a heart-breaking 17-minute film, people from across the UK spoke through their tears about their experiences of losing spouses, parents and siblings.
They shared their horrific pain and guilt of being unable to be with their loved ones when they died - and having to hear of their deaths over the phone or through a care home window.
One said they had "lost everything", while another said they were angry and needed questions answered.
A separate woman spoke directly about the inquiry's job to as she said: "We need to know that lessons will be learned and that future generations will be safeguarded from the heartache that we've had to suffer."
Baroness Heather Hallett, a retired judge who is leading the inquiry, paid tribute to bereaved family members as she opened the first evidence session of the long-awaited public inquiry into the pandemic.
She said: "As people arrived at the hearing centre today they found a dignified vigil of bereaved family members holding photographs of their loved ones.
"Their grief was obvious to all. It is on their behalf, and on behalf of the millions who suffered and continue to suffer in different ways as a result of the pandemic that I intend to answer the following three questions.
"Was the UK properly prepared for a pandemic? Was the response to it appropriate? And can we learn lessons for the future?"
The Covid death toll was 226,977 across the UK as of May 12 2023. Here we document 10 of those stories that were heard today.
Jane, from the West Midlands, who lost her dad and sister five days apart
Jane, from the West Midlands, said: "When we locked down at work, you know, I said 'we need to take this seriously to my chief executive. We're gonna know people that die from this.' But I never thought for a minute it'd be my dad or my sister five days apart."
"I got a call from the home to say my dad wasn't well and we're sending him to hospital, Jane, and I [played] a big part in my dad's care. So I said okay, I'll wait for the ambulance outside. So when the ambulance came, he pulled up and I went in the ambulance with him and I held him in my arms and said, 'Dad you've got to be the strongest you've ever been. There's a terrible disease out there and I need you to be the strongest you've ever been, I can't come in this time'. And he just said 'okay'.
"On the Friday, they said he wasn't well. It was obvious he was dying. And I stayed with him until five o'clock the next morning when he passed away.
"And then I left my dad and my sister had a bit of a cough. I text my sister's partner. She knew he was in hospital, 'dad has passed away and tell her I'll be up at dinner time'. And he rang me back 10 minutes later and said: 'She was unresponsive, I've called an ambulance.'
So within half an hour of me being home and leaving my dad, my sister was being rushed to hospital unresponsive and then all week they were saying, she's not going to make the night, she's not going to make the night and then I said can you try and call us then if you can if there's time to get us up there - we don't want her to die alone she was only 54. And she died alone, five days after my dad."
Catherine, from Wales, whose father died on the other side of a care home window
Catherine, from Wales, whose father was 86 and in care home, was told he was going to die "imminently".
"The only thing we could do was be outside his window in the icy sleety rain.
"Dad's arms were reaching towards me to help him and I couldn't. It's not really an ideal way to say goodbye to your father or anyone.
"And because I live alone and all my family's abroad, I told them not to come back because it was lockdown. It would've just been a nightmare. So I arranged his funeral alone, for what it was the funeral . I think there were 15 people there. I didn't hug anybody from hearing that Dad was going to die right through til past the funeral, I didn't hug anybody.
"It was a frightening time. It was a very, very lonely time. Grief is lonely anyway. But grief, that of that at that time was compounded by the absence of comfort, of closeness of other humans. I used to be a nurse so I know what a good death is. And I wasn't able to give that that. It was hard. It was hard for so many people. I think everybody suffered somehow."
John, from Wales, who lost his wife of 48 years
John, from Wales, whose wife had COPD [Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and went to hospital when her oxygen levels were low, said: "She clearly wanted to come home and I said 'well you've been tested (for Covid) twice, I'll come and get you love.' So I went and got her.
"But that night I awoke to see her sitting on the edge of the bed and she couldn't stop coughing. She was coughing, coughing coughing. The ward rang to say that last test came back positive.
"I woke up and I was really really ill terrible. I must have phoned 999 and I can't remember opening the door to paramedics and then the next thing I knew I woke up in the ward.
"Anyway, a couple of days after she's she did pass away, and suddenly I'm on my own. We were courting for six years and married for 48 and so this affected me a lot. I'm on my own now."
Lucy, from London, who lost her mum within seven days
Lucy, from London, said: "It happened all very quickly. Within seven days, my mum was gone. Just like that. We missed it."
She went on: "It turned out that my mum was actually suffering from Covid and was already in a very bad way.
"She said can we go to the hospital tomorrow and I said no mama, we have to go now. We can't wait until tomorrow.
"We waited and waited and waited. And then a phone call came and it was a doctor, a consultant or a doctor, and called and I actually rushed because I thought oh, they're calling me likely, probably, about the review of my mum.
"And then she just announced that, oh, I'm sorry to tell you but your mom has passed away. I'm expecting to go there and see her and discuss what the next treatments would be and all that and she just said your mum has just passed away.
"You couldn't be there with them to hold their hands. You couldn't see them when they died. You can't really organise a proper funeral. You can't gather together and mourn and be with other people. You're just alone. You're just alone.
"I still suffer from anxiety. I still wear my mask everywhere I go. What I can say is we don't know when it's going to get better. We learn to live with it but you don't know when it's going to get better."
Youssef, from the West Midlands, who lost his dad after he deteriorated within one night
Youssef, from the West Midlands, whose dad went to hospital in early 2021, said: "I think because we weren't really there. We weren't able to really influence the care in the way that we've done previously, where I think our input had made a huge difference to the outcome.
"The impression I got was that he was he was obviously quite unwell, but he was relatively stable. And then on the Friday we got called in to say look he is basically at the end, he's really deteriorated overnight and you should come in so we rushed in but by then it was too late already.
"By the time we got there he had already passed so that was, you know, of course it was a massive shock.
"It's left me both myself and my mum with a great amount of guilt, trauma and pain particularly about what happened."
Anjali, from North West England, who herself was in a coma for months and who lost both her parents
Anjali, North West England, who contracted Covid at the beginning of the pandemic while working on the orthogeriatric ward, said: "After seven days, I started spitting blood and I called the ambulance services. I went to the hospital and immediately I was seen by the consultant and the results were not looking very good at all.
"I was taken to ICU and intubated until after that I woke up after six weeks in the middle of June. I was so unwell that three times they had tried to stop treatment and keep me comfortable. But slowly and steadily I improved. End of August 2021 I was able to go back to work.
"The worst impact this had was on my older, frail elderly parents who lived in India. My mother passed away in 2021 and my father followed her in 2022. So My illness had such a severe impact on my family, on my parents. And I always feel if this hadn't happened, my parents might still be there now."
Brenda, from Northern Ireland, whose mum caught Covid at a simple hospital trip
Brenda, from Northern Ireland, said: "My mum was one of the first in Northern Ireland to die. She died just at the start of lockdown on the 24th of March 2021. Mum was our world.
"Mum only went in to hospital because of something really simple like her Warfarin levels were too high and unfortunately she acquired Covid in there.
"They told me Mum was doing well. I rang up to find out how she was doing. They couldn't give me any information but I said I can't get up so you have to tell me and they said somebody will be in touch later on. And then just after the Prime Minister made his lockdown speech, I got a phone call to say Mum wasn't going to make it.
"I asked if any of us could be there, and they said 'no'. The next 12 hours were the hardest 12 hours of my life.
"She protected us for all our lives, and in the final hours when she really needed us, none of us could be there.
"The phone call came through to say that she passed and I asked the nurse about her belongings and she said I'm sorry everything there'll be incinerated. You know so mummy's wee glasses, all her nighties and dressing gowns all going to be incinerated."
Carole Anne, from Scotland, whose taxi driver brother died
Carole Anne, from Scotland, said her 57-year-old taxi driver brother "caught Covid in the back of the taxi... five weeks. We couldn't see him, nothing." The only update we had was a call from the consultant.
"Eight people at the funeral funeral. My mother, an 83 year old, sitting two metres away from us, sat in in deathly silence. And then next thing we hear is this old steel rattle try to come into the crematorium.
"And everyone turned around and looked and there was my brother getting rolled down in this tatty, old, steel trolley, the noise I'll never forget that noise I'll never forget and that was that.
"I mean people can read things out a textbook and say, 'well I know how you feel'. Nobody knows how we feel. Nobody. Until actually if you're sitting in my shoes right now, then you'll you'll be able to say I know, but nobody knows how I feel.
"Our lives are just broken. You try and go on through each day but I've lost everything."
Catriona, from Northern Ireland, whose dad died after catching Covid in hospital
Catriona, from Northern Ireland, said: "We lost my 67 year old father to hospital acquired Covid on the 23rd of December 2020. The circumstances surrounding the lead up to his death and his eventual demise will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
"At the end of anyone's time, the most you can hope is to give your loved one a good death and we will forever carry the guilt that our Daddy was denied that.
"Our family were denied all the usual bereavement rituals, which has left us with the guilt that we couldn't pay tribute to our father, that those loved him couldn't show their respect. It also left us as a family very isolated. For example, it was six months after Daddy died that my mother first got a human hug.
"And I'm so aware that society are so tired of the whole thing but for us, those missing parts that are there for a reason in the grief process and there's no way to navigate round those things and being denied those - it's a vital part of us being able to move on.
"And ultimately, in order for us to move on, we need to know that lessons will be learned and that future generations will be safeguarded from the heartache that we've had to suffer."
Hazel, from London, who lost the father of her child after he suddenly died in hospital
Hazel, from London, said: "My daughter said that her dad wasn't sounding really well on the telephone and she wanted to go down to see him." They called an ambulance and were told it was "definitely" Covid.
"It took so long to get a doctor to talk to you as to what's happening. Is he getting any better? Is it getting any worse? And then we got the call that they had taken him to intensive care and my heart sank. They said they were gonna put him into an induced coma. And then we got the call back about 11:51 to say that he had passed.
"My anger is I don't know what really happened. What happened between him just being a ward with other people that had Covid to then being transferred to ICU. What was it? I don't have these answers as yet. And this is frustrating for me.
"In the Caribbean culture, I've got to say, when there's a funeral you're talking about hundreds of people easily. They were telling us 20 people could attend a funeral.
"We gave the best send off we could. But that's not the way he would have been sent off on a normal day. No way.
"They had the bodies in bags. You couldn't even give them an outfit to bury your family in. They said they were the zipped bag and it's got some lock on it and they're not allowed to break the lock.
"I'm angry. I need questions answered. I'm just still so upset. And it's been a couple years now and we're still upset and it's not gonna go away just like that."
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