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An damning government inquiry into Britain's handling to the coronavirus emergency determined that the actions were "insufficient and delayed," noting that enacting confinement measures even seven days earlier could have prevented more than 20,000 fatalities.

Key Findings from the Inquiry

Documented in more than seven hundred and fifty sections across two volumes, the results depict a clear picture showing procrastination, lack of action as well as a seeming inability to learn lessons.

The description concerning the beginning of the pandemic at the beginning of 2020 has been described as notably critical, calling February as "a month of inaction."

Ministerial Errors Noted

• It raises questions about the reasons why Boris Johnson did not to convene a single session of the government's Cobra crisis committee that month.
• Measures to the pandemic largely stopped throughout the school break.
• In the second week of that March, the situation was "little short of catastrophic," with a lack of strategy, a lack of testing and consequently no understanding of the extent to which Covid had spread.

What Could Have Been

While admitting that the decision to enforce restrictions had been without precedent and hugely difficult, implementing other action to slow the circulation of the virus earlier could have meant a lockdown could have been prevented, or alternatively have been shorter.

When confinement was necessary, the report stated, if implemented introduced a week earlier, projections showed that might have reduced the total of deaths in England during the initial wave of the pandemic by around half, representing twenty-three thousand deaths prevented.

The inability to recognize the scale of the risk, or the urgency for measures it necessitated, resulted in the fact that by the time the option of enforced restrictions was first discussed it was already too late and a lockdown became necessary.

Ongoing Failures

The report further noted that several of these errors – reacting with delay as well as underestimating the pace and impact of Covid’s spread – occurred again later in 2020, when restrictions were eased and subsequently late reintroduced because of contagious variants.

The report describes this "inexcusable," noting that the government did not to learn lessons over repeated phases.

Overall Toll

The UK experienced among the most severe Covid epidemics across Europe, recording around 240 thousand pandemic fatalities.

This investigation constitutes the second from the ongoing inquiry into every element of the response as well as handling to Covid, which started in previous years and is expected to run until 2027.