Confinement a Week Earlier Could Have Prevented Twenty-Three Thousand Deaths, Coronavirus Inquiry Finds
A damning government investigation into Britain's handling of the coronavirus emergency has found that the actions was "insufficient and delayed," stating that enacting a lockdown just a single week before might have saved over twenty thousand deaths.
Main Conclusions from the Report
Documented in over seven hundred and fifty pages spanning two reports, the results portray a consistent picture of delay, inaction and a seeming incapacity to understand from experience.
The description concerning the start of the pandemic in the first months of 2020 is portrayed as especially critical, calling February as being "a lost month."
Government Shortcomings Highlighted
- It raises questions about the reasons why Boris Johnson neglected to convene any meeting of the government's Cobra response team that month.
- The response to the virus essentially paused during the mid-term vacation.
- By the second week in March, the circumstances was "nearly calamitous," with inadequate plan, a lack of testing and therefore little understanding regarding how far the virus had spread.
Possible Outcome
While acknowledging that the move to implement restrictions had been unprecedented and extremely challenging, taking other action to reduce the transmission of coronavirus sooner could have meant a lockdown might have been avoided, or at least have been of shorter duration.
When confinement became unavoidable, the investigation stated, if implemented introduced on 16 March, modelling suggested this might have reduced the count of lives lost within England in the first wave of Covid by around half, equating to 23,000 deaths prevented.
The failure to recognize the scale of the threat, or the urgency for measures it demanded, resulted in the fact that by the time the option of compulsory confinement was first discussed it was already too late so that a lockdown became inevitable.
Ongoing Failures
The inquiry additionally noted how a number of similar mistakes – reacting too slowly as well as minimizing the speed and effect of the pandemic's progression – were later repeated later in 2020, when controls were eased only to be late reintroduced because of infectious new strains.
It calls this "unacceptable," stating that the government failed to learn lessons during repeated outbreaks.
Total Impact
Britain suffered among the most severe pandemic outbreaks within Europe, recording approximately 240,000 pandemic deaths.
The inquiry is the second by the national review into all aspects of the response as well as management of the pandemic, which began in previous years and is due to continue into 2027.
