Lockdown a Week Before Could Have Spared 23,000 Fatalities, Covid Inquiry Determines

A damning official inquiry into Britain's handling of the coronavirus crisis determined which the response was "too little, too late," stating how enacting a lockdown only one week earlier would have prevented more than 20,000 deaths.

Primary Results of the Inquiry

Outlined through more than seven hundred and fifty pages spanning two parts, the results portray a consistent narrative of hesitation, failure to act and an evident inability to understand from mistakes.

The narrative regarding the start of the coronavirus at the beginning of 2020 has been described as especially harsh, describing February as "a lost month."

Government Shortcomings Highlighted

• It raises questions about why Boris Johnson did not to convene a single meeting of the emergency emergency committee that month.
• Measures to the virus largely halted during the half-term holiday week.
• In the second week in March, the circumstances was described as "little short of disastrous," due to no proper strategy, insufficient testing and consequently little understanding about the extent to which the coronavirus was spreading.

What Could Have Been

Even though recognizing that the choice to enforce restrictions had been unprecedented and hugely difficult, implementing further steps to reduce the transmission of the virus earlier would have allowed such measures could have been prevented, or alternatively been of shorter duration.

By the time restrictions became unavoidable, the report went on, if implemented enforced on March 16, projections suggested that might have reduced the number of lives lost within England in the earliest phase of the virus by around half, equating to 23,000 lives saved.

The inability to appreciate the magnitude of the threat, or the urgency of response it demanded, led to the fact that by the time the option of a mandatory lockdown was initially contemplated it was already belated and a lockdown were inevitable.

Ongoing Failures

The investigation additionally pointed out how many similar failures – responding belatedly as well as underestimating the rate together with consequences of Covid’s spread – were later repeated subsequently in 2020, as controls were removed and subsequently belatedly restored due to contagious new strains.

The report calls such repetition "unacceptable," stating how the government were unable to improve over successive waves.

Final Count

The United Kingdom suffered one of the worst Covid outbreaks across Europe, amounting to about 240,000 pandemic lives lost.

This investigation represents the second by the ongoing review into each part of the management and handling to Covid, that started previously and is expected to run until 2027.