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An damning government inquiry concerning the UK's handling to the coronavirus emergency has concluded that the reaction was "inadequate and belated," stating how enacting restrictions even a single week before might have spared over 20,000 fatalities.

Key Findings of the Report

Documented across more than 750 sections spanning two reports, the results portray an unmistakable picture showing hesitation, lack of action as well as an apparent inability to learn from mistakes.

The narrative about the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 has been described as especially brutal, calling February as "a lost month."

Official Failures Noted

• The report questions why the then prime minister failed to chair one session of the government's Cobra emergency committee in that period.
• The response to the pandemic effectively halted over the half-term holiday week.
• By the second week of March, the situation had become "almost disastrous," due to inadequate plan, no testing and therefore little understanding of the extent to which the virus had spread.

Possible Outcome

Even though acknowledging that the decision to impose a lockdown had been historic and extremely challenging, implementing additional measures to reduce the spread of Covid sooner would have allowed that one might have been avoided, or at least have been shorter.

By the time restrictions was necessary, the investigation went on, if implemented enforced on 16 March, estimates indicated this would have reduced the number of deaths across England in the earliest phase of Covid by around half, which equals over 20,000 deaths prevented.

The inability to recognize the scale of the danger, or the immediacy of response it necessitated, meant that once the possibility of a mandatory lockdown was initially contemplated it had become too delayed and restrictions were unavoidable.

Repeated Mistakes

The report further highlighted how many of these failures – reacting too slowly and minimizing the speed together with consequences of Covid’s spread – were later repeated subsequently in 2020, as measures were eased only to be delayed reintroduced because of spreading mutations.

The report labels such repetition "unacceptable," adding that officials failed to learn lessons over repeated waves.

Total Impact

The UK suffered among the worst pandemic crises within Europe, with about 240 thousand pandemic fatalities.

The inquiry constitutes the second by the public review covering each part of the handling and management to the coronavirus, that started previously and is scheduled to proceed through 2027.