🔗 Share this article

A harsh independent investigation regarding Britain's management to the Covid crisis determined which the response was "insufficient and delayed," declaring that enacting restrictions just one week before could have saved more than 23,000 deaths.

Key Findings of the Investigation

Documented across over 750 documents across two reports, the findings portray a consistent narrative showing procrastination, failure to act as well as a seeming incapacity to absorb from mistakes.

The narrative regarding the beginning of the pandemic in the first months of 2020 is portrayed as particularly brutal, describing the month of February as "a wasted month."

Official Failures Highlighted

• It questions the reasons why the then prime minister neglected to convene one meeting of the government's Cobra crisis committee that month.
• The response to Covid effectively paused throughout the school break.
• By the second week of March, the state of affairs was "almost calamitous," due to no proper strategy, insufficient testing and thus no understanding about the degree to which Covid was spreading.

What Could Have Been

While admitting the fact that the move to enforce restrictions proved to be unprecedented and extremely challenging, enacting further steps to reduce the circulation of the virus earlier would have allowed that one may not have been necessary, or have been of shorter duration.

By the time restrictions became unavoidable, the investigation noted, had it been imposed a week earlier, estimates showed this would have lowered the count of fatalities across England in the earliest phase of the virus by nearly 50%, equating to 23,000 deaths prevented.

The inability to understand the scale of the risk, and the need for action it necessitated, meant that once the possibility of enforced restrictions was first considered it proved too late and a lockdown had become inevitable.

Recurring Errors

The inquiry further highlighted that many of the same mistakes – responding with delay and downplaying the pace together with impact of the pandemic's progression – were later repeated later in 2020, as measures were eased and subsequently late restored because of spreading new strains.

It calls this "unjustifiable," adding how those in charge did not to learn lessons over repeated outbreaks.

Final Count

The United Kingdom endured one of the deadliest coronavirus epidemics in Europe, with approximately 240 thousand virus-related fatalities.

This investigation constitutes the second by the ongoing investigation covering all aspects of the response and management of the pandemic, which was launched previously and is due to run until 2027.