Lockdown Seven Days Earlier Could Have Prevented 23,000 Fatalities, Covid Report Determines
A damning independent report regarding the United Kingdom's management to the pandemic emergency has concluded that the reaction was "inadequate and belated," stating how implementing restrictions just a single week before would have spared over 23,000 fatalities.
Key Findings of the Investigation
Documented in over 750 sections spanning two volumes, the conclusions paint a consistent story of delay, inaction and an evident failure to absorb from mistakes.
The description concerning the beginning of the pandemic at the beginning of 2020 is portrayed as especially harsh, describing February as "a lost month."
Official Shortcomings Emphasized
- It questions why Boris Johnson did not to lead a single session of the Cobra emergency committee in that period.
- Measures to the virus largely stopped over the school break.
- In the second week of March, the circumstances was described as "nearly calamitous," with a lack of strategy, a lack of testing and thus no clear picture about the degree to which Covid was spreading.
Possible Outcome
While acknowledging the fact that the choice to impose a lockdown was historic as well as extremely challenging, implementing further steps to curb the circulation of Covid sooner would have allowed that one might have been avoided, or alternatively been shorter.
When confinement was necessary, the investigation went on, had it been enforced on 16 March, modelling suggested that could have lowered the number of lives lost in England in the earliest phase of the virus by around half, equating to 23,000 fatalities avoided.
The inability to appreciate the extent of the threat, or the urgency of response it required, meant the fact that by the time the possibility of enforced restrictions was initially contemplated it proved too late so that such measures became unavoidable.
Repeated Mistakes
The investigation additionally pointed out how several similar failures – reacting with delay as well as downplaying the speed together with consequences of Covid’s spread – were then repeated in the latter part of 2020, as restrictions were eased only to be belatedly reintroduced because of spreading variants.
The report describes such repetition "unacceptable," adding that the government did not to improve over multiple waves.
Total Impact
Britain suffered one of the deadliest Covid crises within Europe, amounting to around 240 thousand pandemic deaths.
This investigation represents the second from the national investigation regarding each part of the management as well as response to the coronavirus, that was launched previously and is scheduled to run through 2027.
