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An harsh official inquiry regarding Britain's management of the Covid crisis determined that the reaction was "inadequate and belated," noting that implementing a lockdown just one week sooner might have saved in excess of 23,000 fatalities.

Primary Results from the Inquiry

Outlined in more than seven hundred fifty pages spanning two volumes, the results paint an unmistakable picture of delay, lack of action as well as an evident failure to absorb from mistakes.

The description about the onset of the pandemic in the first months of 2020 has been described as especially harsh, labeling the month of February as "a lost month."

Official Shortcomings Emphasized

• The report questions the reasons why the then prime minister failed to convene any gathering of the Cobra crisis committee during February.
• The response to the pandemic essentially paused over the school break.
• During the second week of that March, the state of affairs was described as "almost disastrous," due to inadequate strategy, insufficient testing and thus no understanding of the extent to which the coronavirus was spreading.

Possible Outcome

While admitting that the decision to enforce confinement was without precedent and extremely challenging, taking further steps to curb the transmission of coronavirus more quickly might have resulted in such measures may not have been necessary, or at least been less lengthy.

When restrictions was inevitable, the report stated, if it had been imposed a week earlier, modelling suggested this might have lowered the count of lives lost across England in the earliest phase of Covid by around half, which equals 23,000 lives saved.

The omission to understand the scale of the threat, and the immediacy of response it demanded, meant the fact that by the time the possibility of compulsory confinement was first considered it proved too delayed and a lockdown became unavoidable.

Recurring Errors

The inquiry also pointed out that several similar errors – responding belatedly and minimizing the rate together with impact of the pandemic's progression – were later repeated subsequently in 2020, when measures were lifted and subsequently delayed reintroduced due to contagious new strains.

It calls such repetition "unacceptable," stating how officials were unable to improve through multiple phases.

Total Impact

The UK experienced among the most severe Covid outbreaks in Europe, recording around 240 thousand Covid-related deaths.

This report represents another by the national investigation covering each part of the handling and response to Covid, that started two years ago and is expected to proceed through 2027.