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A damning independent investigation regarding Britain's response of the coronavirus emergency has concluded that the reaction was "too little, too late," declaring that implementing restrictions just a single week earlier might have spared in excess of 20,000 deaths.

Main Conclusions of the Inquiry

Documented in over seven hundred fifty pages across two volumes, the results depict an unmistakable picture showing procrastination, lack of action as well as an apparent inability to understand from experience.

The narrative about the beginning of the pandemic in the first months of 2020 has been described as especially critical, describing February as being "a month of inaction."

Official Failures Noted

• It raises questions about why the then prime minister neglected to chair any gathering of the Cobra emergency committee during February.
• Action to Covid essentially stopped over the school break.
• In the second week of March, the state of affairs was described as "almost catastrophic," with a lack of plan, no testing and consequently little understanding about how far the virus had circulated.

Potential Impact

While admitting the fact that the decision to implement restrictions proved to be without precedent and exceptionally hard, taking additional measures to curb the transmission of Covid sooner would have allowed that one might have been avoided, or alternatively been less lengthy.

When a lockdown was inevitable, the investigation went on, if implemented introduced on March 16, projections showed this might have cut the number of fatalities in England during the initial wave of the virus by around half, which equals 23,000 fatalities avoided.

The failure to understand the scale of the risk, or the urgency for action it necessitated, meant that when the chance of compulsory confinement was first discussed it was already too delayed so that a lockdown became necessary.

Recurring Errors

The inquiry also highlighted that many of the same failures – reacting with delay and minimizing the rate together with consequences of Covid’s spread – were then repeated in the latter part of 2020, when restrictions were removed only to be delayed reintroduced in the face of infectious mutations.

It calls this "inexcusable," stating that those in charge did not to learn lessons during successive waves.

Total Impact

Britain endured among the most severe coronavirus crises across Europe, with around two hundred forty thousand pandemic deaths.

The inquiry constitutes another by the public investigation regarding every element of the response as well as management to Covid, that was launched in previous years and is scheduled to continue through 2027.