Confinement One Week Before Could Have Prevented Over 20,000 Fatalities, Pandemic Inquiry Finds
A damning independent report concerning the UK's response to the Covid crisis has found that the reaction were "too little, too late," declaring that implementing confinement measures only one week sooner would have prevented over twenty thousand lives.
Key Findings of the Investigation
Detailed across over 750 sections across two reports, the findings portray an unmistakable narrative of procrastination, inaction and an evident failure to understand lessons.
The account regarding the beginning of Covid-19 in the first months of 2020 is particularly harsh, calling February as being "a lost month."
Government Failures Noted
- It raises questions about the reasons why the then prime minister failed to chair a single gathering of the government's Cobra emergency committee that month.
- Measures to the virus essentially paused over the half-term holiday week.
- By the second week in March, the circumstances had become "almost catastrophic," with a lack of preparation, insufficient testing and therefore no understanding about the extent to which the virus had spread.
What Could Have Been
Even though recognizing that the choice to enforce a lockdown proved to be without precedent and hugely difficult, taking further steps to curb the transmission of Covid sooner could have meant that one might have been avoided, or at least been less lengthy.
When confinement was necessary, the inquiry authors went on, if implemented imposed on March 16, modelling suggested this would have reduced the number of deaths across England in the first wave of the virus by around half, equating to over 20,000 lives saved.
The inability to recognize the magnitude of the threat, and the immediacy of response it demanded, led to the fact that when the chance of enforced restrictions was first considered it had become belated so that restrictions were inevitable.
Repeated Mistakes
The report additionally highlighted how a number of of these mistakes – responding too slowly and minimizing the pace and effect of the virus's transmission – were then repeated in the latter part of 2020, as measures were eased and then belatedly reintroduced because of infectious new strains.
It calls this "inexcusable," adding that the government were unable to learn lessons during repeated phases.
Total Impact
The United Kingdom suffered one of the most severe coronavirus epidemics in Europe, amounting to approximately 240,000 pandemic fatalities.
This report constitutes the second from the ongoing review regarding each part of the management as well as response of the pandemic, that started in previous years and is due to run until 2027.
