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An critical government report regarding the United Kingdom's handling to the Covid situation has found that the reaction was "insufficient and delayed," stating that implementing a lockdown even seven days sooner would have prevented over 23,000 fatalities.

Main Conclusions of the Inquiry

Outlined in over 750 pages covering two volumes, the results paint a clear narrative of hesitation, failure to act as well as an apparent inability to learn from experience.

The narrative regarding the onset of the coronavirus in the first months of 2020 is notably brutal, describing the month of February as "a month of inaction."

Official Errors Highlighted

• The report questions why the then prime minister did not to convene a single meeting of the Cobra emergency committee during February.
• Action to the pandemic largely halted over the mid-term vacation.
• During the second week of that March, the state of affairs was "almost disastrous," due to a lack of plan, no testing and consequently no understanding regarding the degree to which Covid had spread.

Possible Outcome

While recognizing the fact that the decision to enforce confinement was historic as well as extremely challenging, enacting other action to curb the spread of Covid more quickly would have allowed a lockdown could have been prevented, or alternatively been of shorter duration.

When restrictions was necessary, the inquiry authors stated, had it been enforced on March 16, modelling indicated this could have cut the number of deaths within England during the initial wave of the virus by around half, equating to twenty-three thousand deaths prevented.

The omission to understand the extent of the threat, and the immediacy of response it required, resulted in the fact that by the time the chance of compulsory confinement was first considered it proved too late so that such measures became inevitable.

Repeated Mistakes

The report additionally highlighted that many similar failures – responding with delay and underestimating the pace and consequences of the pandemic's progression – were later repeated subsequently in 2020, when restrictions were removed and then delayed reintroduced due to spreading mutations.

It labels this "unacceptable," adding how those in charge failed to improve through repeated outbreaks.

Overall Toll

The UK experienced among the worst coronavirus epidemics across Europe, recording around two hundred forty thousand pandemic deaths.

This report represents the latest from the ongoing investigation covering each part of the response and management to the coronavirus, which started two years ago and is scheduled to run until 2027.