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A harsh government inquiry into Britain's handling of the pandemic emergency has concluded that the actions was "insufficient and delayed," declaring that enacting confinement measures even seven days before would have saved in excess of 23,000 lives.

Key Findings from the Report

Documented in over seven hundred fifty documents across two parts, the conclusions portray a clear story of delay, lack of action as well as an evident inability to absorb lessons.

The account about the start of Covid-19 at the beginning of 2020 is portrayed as particularly critical, labeling February as "a lost month."

Ministerial Errors Noted

• The report questions the reasons why Boris Johnson did not to chair any meeting of the Cobra response team in that period.
• The response to Covid effectively stopped over the mid-term vacation.
• In the second week in March, the state of affairs had become "little short of disastrous," with a lack of strategy, insufficient testing and thus no clear picture of the extent to which the virus had spread.

Potential Impact

Even though acknowledging that the move to impose confinement was unprecedented and exceptionally hard, enacting additional measures to reduce the transmission of coronavirus more quickly might have resulted in a lockdown might have been avoided, or alternatively been shorter.

When confinement was necessary, the investigation noted, had it been imposed on 16 March, modelling suggested that would have cut the number of fatalities across England in the first wave of the pandemic by around half, which equals over 20,000 fatalities avoided.

The failure to appreciate the magnitude of the risk, and the need of response it necessitated, led to the fact that by the time the possibility of compulsory confinement was first considered it proved belated and restrictions had become inevitable.

Repeated Mistakes

The report further noted how several of the same failures – reacting belatedly as well as minimizing the speed and impact of Covid’s spread – occurred again later in 2020, as restrictions were removed and subsequently belatedly reimposed in the face of contagious new strains.

The report labels this "unjustifiable," stating that officials did not to absorb experience through successive waves.

Overall Toll

The UK suffered one of the most severe coronavirus crises in Europe, amounting to about 240 thousand pandemic lives lost.

This investigation is another by the ongoing review regarding every element of the handling and handling to Covid, which started two years ago and is due to proceed through 2027.