🔗 Share this article

An damning official inquiry regarding the UK's management to the pandemic situation has found which the actions was "too little, too late," stating how implementing restrictions just seven days before might have prevented over 23,000 deaths.

Main Conclusions from the Inquiry

Detailed across over 750 documents spanning two reports, the conclusions paint an unmistakable picture of delay, failure to act as well as an evident inability to learn from experience.

The narrative concerning the onset of the coronavirus in the first months of 2020 is notably harsh, labeling February as "a wasted month."

Government Failures Emphasized

• It raises questions about why the then prime minister neglected to convene one meeting of the emergency crisis committee during February.
• Action to Covid effectively stopped over the mid-term vacation.
• In the second week in March, the state of affairs was described as "almost catastrophic," due to a lack of preparation, a lack of testing and consequently little understanding regarding how far the virus had circulated.

Possible Outcome

Although admitting the fact that the choice to impose confinement proved to be without precedent and extremely challenging, enacting other action to curb the circulation of Covid earlier might have resulted in such measures may not have been necessary, or proved of shorter duration.

When a lockdown was necessary, the inquiry authors went on, had it been introduced a week earlier, projections suggested that could have lowered the count of lives lost across England in the earliest phase of the pandemic by nearly 50%, equating to over 20,000 lives saved.

The omission to understand the magnitude of the risk, or the urgency of response it necessitated, led to that by the time the chance of enforced restrictions was first considered it had become too late and a lockdown became unavoidable.

Repeated Mistakes

The investigation also highlighted how several similar mistakes – reacting belatedly and underestimating the speed and impact of Covid’s spread – were then repeated in the latter part of 2020, as measures were eased only to be belatedly reimposed due to spreading variants.

It describes this "inexcusable," stating that the government were unable to learn lessons through multiple waves.

Overall Toll

The UK experienced one of the worst coronavirus crises within Europe, amounting to around 240,000 pandemic fatalities.

This report represents the second by the ongoing inquiry regarding each part of the management and response of the pandemic, that began in previous years and is expected to run into 2027.