Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has faced the Covid-19 inquiry for the first time, answering questions on why the UK wasn’t adequately prepared for a pandemic that has so far killed more than 200,000 Brits.

The mood in the hearing room was sober as Hunt entered and began his evidence giving. He began by discussing a “traumatic” moment in a pandemic simulation where he was asked to make a hypothetical decision that would lead “to the death of numerous people”.

Hunt was grilled about how well the Department of Health – now the Department of Health and Social Care – was prepared for the coronavirus pandemic, particularly after years of austerity measures and an NHS budget that did not rise with inflation or expand to suit an ageing population.

“I don’t think any healthcare systems can plan to have as many doctors or nurses as you would need in an extreme pandemic situation just because of cost,” Hunt said.

Addressing the inquiry, Hunt – now the UK chancellor – explained that a “mistake” was made by focusing preparations on a flu pandemic, rather than a coronavirus pandemic, as well as not putting enough emphasis on prevention.

“We didn’t ask the searching questions as to whether we should be doing more preparations for one of those viruses becoming more contagious,” said Hunt. “We didn’t put anything like the time and effort energy into understanding those dangers [of a coronavirus pandemic].”

He added, however, the need to be “realistic”: “You can’t – as a government – prepare for every single scenario exhaustively, so you have to make choices as to which of those likely scenarios you’re going to have to deal with.”

Hunt was health secretary between 2012 and 2018. During his time in the post, patient experience and staff morale fell, waiting times increased, the waiting list for treatments grew by 1.4 million, and his decisions led to the first ever junior doctor strike.

Speaking about the early days of the pandemic, Hunt said there was “groupthink” that led to certain assumptions about how to manage the virus.

“I think there was a groupthink that we knew this stuff best,” he admitted. “There was a sense that – perhaps with the exception of the United States – there wasn’t an enormous amount to learn from other countries.

“There was a shared assumption that herd immunity was inevitably going to be the only way that you contain a virus that spreads like wildfire.”

The former health secretary also criticised the decision not to show him documents about a pandemic modelling exercise – Exercise Alice – but did not say whose failure it was.

“Here was the one bit of all our pandemic preparations where we were closest to thinking about a Covid-style pandemic, and it got very little attention in the grander scheme of things,” he said.

Hunt was addressing the first module of the Covid-19 inquiry, hours after deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden was called to give evidence.

Dowden told the inquiry that it was “appropriate” for the UK to have deprioritised pandemic planning in order to focus on a no-deal Brexit.

Hunt was heckled by a member of the public who had lost a loved one as he left.

Naomi Fulop, a spokesperson for the group Covid Bereaved Families for Justice, told openDemocracy: “The evidence throughout this week has pointed towards underfunding and understaffing of the NHS, as well as political failure to prepare for a non-flu pandemic, as key failures that led to the UK having the world’s sixth worst death toll.

“Hunt today insisted again that underfunding wasn’t a problem, which begs the question of whether he thinks over 220,000 is an acceptable death toll. To those of us grieving one of those 220,000 it is not, and politicians denying the facts won’t help us save lives in the future.”

The inquiry continues.