🔗 Share this article Restrictions One Week Earlier Would Have Saved 23,000 Lives, Covid Inquiry Determines An damning official report into the United Kingdom's handling to the Covid emergency determined which the response was "inadequate and belated," stating that implementing a lockdown even seven days before would have saved in excess of 23,000 deaths. Primary Results of the Investigation Outlined across more than seven hundred fifty documents across two parts, the results paint a consistent narrative of delay, failure to act and a seeming incapacity to absorb from experience. The narrative about the onset of the coronavirus in the first months of 2020 has been described as particularly critical, labeling the month of February as being "a month of inaction." Ministerial Failures Emphasized The report questions the reasons why Boris Johnson neglected to chair a single session of the emergency response team during February. The response to Covid effectively paused during the school break. In the second week in March, the state of affairs was "little short of catastrophic," due to no proper strategy, a lack of testing and therefore no clear picture of the degree to which the virus had circulated. Potential Impact Although acknowledging that the decision to impose confinement proved to be unprecedented as well as extremely challenging, enacting additional measures to reduce the transmission of the virus more quickly could have meant such measures might have been avoided, or alternatively have been shorter. Once confinement was necessary, the investigation stated, if implemented imposed on March 16, modelling showed this might have lowered the number of deaths in England in the earliest phase of the pandemic by almost half, equating to 23,000 deaths prevented. The inability to understand the extent of the risk, or the need for measures it necessitated, led to the fact that once the possibility of a mandatory lockdown was initially contemplated it was already belated and a lockdown had become necessary. Repeated Mistakes The investigation additionally highlighted that many similar errors – responding too slowly as well as minimizing the rate and impact of Covid’s spread – were later repeated later in 2020, when measures were lifted and then belatedly reimposed in the face of infectious variants. The report describes such repetition "unacceptable," stating how the government were unable to learn lessons through multiple outbreaks. Overall Toll The United Kingdom experienced among the most severe Covid epidemics across Europe, with approximately two hundred forty thousand Covid-related lives lost. The inquiry represents the latest by the public review regarding all aspects of the response as well as handling to Covid, which started two years ago and is scheduled to run through 2027.