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An critical independent inquiry into the UK's handling of the Covid emergency has found that the reaction was "inadequate and belated," noting how implementing a lockdown only seven days earlier could have prevented in excess of 20,000 fatalities.

Main Conclusions of the Report

Detailed through over 750 documents spanning two volumes, the conclusions depict an unmistakable story of hesitation, lack of action as well as a seeming inability to learn lessons.

The description regarding the onset of the coronavirus at the beginning of 2020 is particularly brutal, describing February as being "a lost month."

Government Errors Highlighted

• The report questions why Boris Johnson did not to chair one gathering of the government's Cobra crisis committee during February.
• Measures to the virus effectively paused throughout the school break.
• In the second week of that March, the situation was "almost calamitous," due to no proper preparation, insufficient testing and thus little understanding of how far the virus had spread.

Possible Outcome

Although recognizing the fact that the move to enforce a lockdown had been without precedent and extremely challenging, enacting further steps to curb the circulation of the virus more quickly would have allowed such measures might have been avoided, or have been less lengthy.

Once confinement was inevitable, the report went on, had it been enforced on March 16, projections suggested this might have reduced the total of fatalities in England during the initial wave of the virus by almost half, which equals twenty-three thousand fatalities avoided.

The omission to understand the magnitude of the threat, or the need for action it necessitated, resulted in that when the option of compulsory confinement was first considered it proved belated and a lockdown became unavoidable.

Recurring Errors

The inquiry further highlighted how a number of similar mistakes – responding with delay and underestimating the rate and consequences of the virus's transmission – occurred again subsequently in 2020, as controls were lifted and then belatedly restored in the face of infectious mutations.

It describes such repetition "unacceptable," stating how the government did not to learn lessons during multiple phases.

Final Count

The UK suffered among the deadliest Covid epidemics within Europe, amounting to around 240,000 Covid-related lives lost.

This investigation is the second by the national investigation into all aspects of the response and response to Covid, that was launched previously and is due to run until 2027.