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A critical official investigation concerning the UK's management to the pandemic crisis has concluded which the actions were "too little, too late," stating that enacting confinement measures only one week earlier might have prevented more than twenty thousand deaths.

Key Findings of the Inquiry

Documented in more than seven hundred fifty sections spanning two volumes, the conclusions paint a consistent narrative of hesitation, inaction as well as an evident inability to learn from mistakes.

The description concerning the start of the coronavirus at the beginning of 2020 is particularly harsh, labeling February as being "a wasted month."

Government Errors Noted

• It questions why Boris Johnson failed to lead one meeting of the emergency response team that month.
• The response to the pandemic effectively stopped throughout the school break.
• In the second week of March, the situation was "little short of disastrous," with no proper preparation, a lack of testing and therefore little understanding of the degree to which the coronavirus had spread.

Possible Outcome

Even though acknowledging that the decision to implement restrictions had been unprecedented and exceptionally hard, taking other action to reduce the spread of Covid sooner could have meant such measures could have been prevented, or at least been less lengthy.

When a lockdown became unavoidable, the report noted, had it been introduced on 16 March, estimates suggested that might have lowered the number of fatalities within England in the earliest phase of the pandemic by nearly 50%, which equals 23,000 fatalities avoided.

The omission to recognize the scale of the risk, and the need of response it required, meant that once the option of a mandatory lockdown was initially contemplated it had become too late and a lockdown became unavoidable.

Recurring Errors

The investigation also highlighted that many of the same errors – reacting too slowly and minimizing the speed together with consequences of the pandemic's progression – occurred again later in 2020, as measures were removed and then delayed restored in the face of infectious new strains.

The report labels such repetition "inexcusable," adding that the government did not to learn lessons during multiple phases.

Final Count

The UK suffered one of the worst coronavirus crises across Europe, amounting to approximately 240 thousand Covid-related fatalities.

The inquiry constitutes the second by the public inquiry covering each part of the handling as well as handling to Covid, that began two years ago and is expected to proceed into 2027.