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A critical independent investigation into the UK's management of the Covid situation determined that the response was "too little, too late," declaring how implementing restrictions only one week before might have saved in excess of twenty thousand deaths.

Key Findings from the Investigation

Detailed through more than seven hundred and fifty documents spanning two volumes, the results portray a clear story showing delay, failure to act and a seeming failure to absorb from experience.

The account about the onset of the pandemic in the first months of 2020 is particularly brutal, describing February as being "a wasted month."

Official Errors Noted

• It questions why the then prime minister failed to chair any meeting of the emergency emergency committee that month.
• Action to the virus essentially stopped over the half-term holiday week.
• In the second week of that March, the state of affairs was "almost catastrophic," due to inadequate preparation, insufficient testing and therefore little understanding about how far the coronavirus was spreading.

Potential Impact

Although acknowledging the fact that the move to enforce restrictions was historic as well as exceptionally hard, enacting further steps to reduce the transmission of the virus more quickly could have meant a lockdown might have been avoided, or have been less lengthy.

Once restrictions was necessary, the report noted, if implemented introduced on March 16, estimates showed this would have reduced the total of lives lost in England during the initial wave of the pandemic by nearly 50%, equating to 23,000 lives saved.

The failure to understand the magnitude of the risk, or the urgency of response it required, led to that when the option of a mandatory lockdown was initially contemplated it was already belated so that restrictions had become necessary.

Recurring Errors

The investigation also highlighted how many of these failures – reacting with delay and underestimating the speed together with impact of Covid’s spread – occurred again later in 2020, when controls were eased and then delayed restored because of infectious variants.

The report calls such repetition "unjustifiable," adding that the government were unable to improve through successive phases.

Overall Toll

Britain suffered among the most severe pandemic crises across Europe, recording around 240 thousand virus-related deaths.

This investigation represents the latest from the national inquiry into each part of the handling and management of the pandemic, that started in previous years and is expected to run into 2027.