This is the best summary I could come up with:

At the start of what is set to be a bruising week for the former prime minister, with former political aides and senior civil servants to give evidence on his government’s handling of the pandemic, the diary of a former private secretary revealed the damaging remarks made in March 2020.

The WhatsApp message was sent to Dominic Cummings, at the time Johnson’s chief adviser, by the cabinet secretary, who confided in the midst of an oscillating government response to the pandemic: “I am at the end of my tether.”

“He changes strategic direction every day (Monday we were all about fear of virus returning as per Europe, March etc – today we’re in ‘let it rip’ mode cos [sic] the UK is pathetic, needs a cold shower etc.

Reynolds, who was nicknamed “Party Marty” after it emerged he had invited more than 100 Downing Street staff to a “bring your own booze” event during the first lockdown, told the inquiry that he wished to “apologise unreservedly to all the families of all those who suffered during Covid for all the distress caused”.

Against the backdrop of a debate about the wearing of face coverings in schools during the pandemic, Case had written in a WhatsApp message that it had been recommended to Johnson that “permissive guidance” be created around masks because it was going to become a “drama”.

Records read out showed he met with the Russian newspaper proprietor and also telephoned him at the height of what counsel for the inquiry described as a 10-day “crisis” about a change of strategy in the run-up to the first lockdown.

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