Kate Garraway has said that she "spends a lot of time reflecting on whether things might have been different" for husband Derek Draper after Dominic Cummings savaged the government yesterday.
In seven hours' worth of explosive testimony yesterday, Cummings accused Health Secretary Matt Hancock of "lying repeatedly" and accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of being unfit for the job.
"Tens of thousands died that didn't need to die," Cummings told MPs yesterday, with calls for an inquiry growing.
Kate's husband Derek, 53, contracted Covid-19 in March 2020, leaving him hospitalised and put into an induced coma.
Derek returned home earlier this year to be with Kate, 54, but needs round-the-clock care and is still suffering the effects of long Covid.
Asked by host Susanna Reid about whether she believed that things could have been different for her had the government approached the pandemic in a different way, Kate said: "I spend a lot of time reflecting on whether things might have been different in lots of ways - both in the government's handling of it, in the scientific advice, in the doctors' advice, specifically today. And it was definitely confused, wasn't it?
"So I think hindsight is a wonderful thing but it doesn't mean to say that we don't address what went wrong. So obviously there were things that could have helped, we now know.
"But just as the doctors say, if we'd given Derek this particular medication at this point, we now know that that would have definitely helped but at the time we feared that it might have killed him. I'm quite generous to the government generally about the fact that they were looking at the situation thinking, 'What is going to be the most harmful?' And if, as he said, that Boris Johnson was more concerned with the economy, maybe he genuinely believed that that was the biggest risk.
"But it doesn't mean to say that planning for the pandemic and planning for lockdown, that should have been in place just from Boris Johnson's perspective but as a society, that we haven't got those things in place."
She also explained that the things that she considered "very damaging" was in some of "the flippant things that [Cummings] said".
"That some of the cabinet members were skiing at the time of the COBRA meetings," she pointed out. "I think that sent a massive signal to the public that we didn't need to worry.
"It led to not being taken seriously... then it turned to fear."
Dr Hilary Jones agreed and said: "It was a disgraceful preparation for a pandemic in a long time."
Susanna added: "I think that this is devastating for Matt Hancock and the prime minister."
*Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV
