A hospital consultant who treated Sergei and Yulia Skripal after they were poisoned with the nerve agent novichok was “gobsmacked” when Yulia woke and began trying to get out of bed four days after the attack.
Dr Stephen Cockroft said he tried to reassure Yulia, who was “crying and terrified”, that she was safe and also asked her if anyone had attacked her and her father or sprayed anything over them.
Cockroft told the inquiry into the Wiltshire poisonings he had been “quite sure” at the time that Yulia had suffered “catastrophic” brain damage. He said: “I was gobsmacked; this was a girl I never thought I would see move again.”
The consultant said he was later warned against questioning Yulia, removed from the intensive care rota and ordered not to discuss the Skripals’ symptoms with colleagues.
He said this meant his experience recognising the symptoms of novichok poisoning were not passed on by the time Dawn Sturgess, 44, was fatally poisoned with the nerve agent three months later. He said this was a “lost opportunity”.
It also emerged that following the novichok poisonings, 87 people self-presented at A&E worried they may have been contaminated.
Cockroft said that when the Skripals were brought to Salisbury district hospital on 4 March 2018, he considered they may have been poisoned as they did not fit the profile of recreational drug users. He said Sergei was behaving in an “extremely odd manner” and he had thought Yulia was likely to have suffered extensive brain damage.
He was not officially told that Skripal was a former Russian spy but a police officer told him: “I think you should Google Sergei Skripal. You’re not going to believe what I have just found out.” He did this, which “set off a tremendous alarm bell”.
Asked if he considered a nerve agent, he said: “I did. But of course, that’s a pretty wild thing to think of in Salisbury.”
Cockroft described how on 8 March 2018 a colleague ordered a “sedation hold” on Yulia, which is routinely done in patients who are being kept unconscious.
A staff member shouted to Cockroft: “Steve, come quick. Yulia is getting out of bed.” He said: “I grabbed hold of her hands and started to talk to her.” He told her she and her father had been taken ill. He asked her: “Did anyone attack you? Did anyone spray anything over you?”
Cockroft said he was trying to comfort Yulia and she went back to sleep about five minutes later.
The inquiry was told Dr Christine Blanchard, the hospital’s medical director, removed Cockroft from the intensive care rota. He said he was told he “hadn’t been wise” to speak to Yulia about what had happened and it would be treated as “serious misconduct” if he discussed “any aspect of the poisonings” with colleagues or other people.
Cockroft said he was stopped from talking at two meetings between professionals in April and June 2018. “I felt it absolutely vital that we share the knowledge,” he said.
One meeting was attended by almost all the doctors in the emergency department at Salisbury. He said: “This would have been an ideal opportunity to discuss how the Skripals presented and share the secret. When I started to speak I was told I wasn’t required.”
Sturgess died after collapsing on 30 June, having been poisoned with novichok, and died at Salisbury district hospital on 8 July. On 12 July a debrief was held and, finally, Cockroft was able to share his experiences.
Under questioning by Michael Mansfield KC, for the Sturgess family, Cockroft said he would have liked to have passed on what he had observed, such as the patients’ “profound sweating” and “intense salivation”. He said: “It was something I will never forget. That’s something I felt people need to know.”
In a statement given to the inquiry, Cockroft added: “It was a conversation of such dubious significance because of the fact that she has just woken up from a coma. Apparently by having had a conversation with Yulia Skripal I had been unprofessional and should have left such a conversation to the security services.”
A doctor and expert on toxicology who works at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) told the inquiry that a very small amount of novichok – equivalent to a few grains of sand – could be fatal when applied to the skin.
The man, identified only by the cipher FT49, said there was no single treatment for novichok. “Our best medical interventions are a collection of therapies,” he said.
FT49 said Sturgess may have suffered a “multi-route exposure” by spraying novichok from a perfume bottle containing the nerve agent on her wrist and inhaling it.
He said people who may have “passingly” been exposed to novichok such as first aiders were not likely to have suffered permanent ill effects. “The human body is quite good at buffering a very low dose of exposure,” he said.
The inquiry heard about a text conversation in the hours after Sturgess was poisoned between FT49 and Dr Stephen Jukes, who was treating her.
They were working on the theory that Sturgess and her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, may have been poisoned by a contaminated batch of recreational drugs, though in one message Jukes said: “Unless they were randomly selected by Russia to test us again.”
Andrew O’Connor KC, the barrister for the inquiry, suggested it had not entered into their thinking that they may have been poisoned with novichok that was in a discarded container. FT49 said it would have helped if more training had been done and more information shared following the Salisbury attacks.
The inquiry continues.
