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An harsh independent report concerning Britain's handling to the coronavirus emergency has found that the response was "inadequate and belated," stating how enacting confinement measures only one week sooner could have saved over 20,000 deaths.

Primary Results from the Inquiry

Documented through exceeding 750 pages across two parts, the conclusions paint an unmistakable picture showing procrastination, inaction as well as a seeming incapacity to understand lessons.

The description about the onset of Covid-19 at the beginning of 2020 has been described as particularly critical, describing February as being "a lost month."

Official Failures Emphasized

• The report questions the reasons why the then prime minister failed to lead one session of the emergency crisis committee that month.
• Action to the virus largely halted throughout the mid-term vacation.
• By the second week of March, the state of affairs had become "little short of catastrophic," due to no proper strategy, no testing and therefore little understanding of the extent to which the virus had circulated.

Possible Outcome

While recognizing the fact that the decision to implement restrictions had been unprecedented and exceptionally hard, implementing further steps to curb the circulation of Covid more quickly could have meant that one could have been prevented, or at least been shorter.

When a lockdown became unavoidable, the inquiry authors noted, if it had been introduced on March 16, projections indicated that could have reduced the number of fatalities within England in the earliest phase of the pandemic by around half, which equals 23,000 fatalities avoided.

The omission to understand the scale of the threat, and the urgency for action it demanded, led to the fact that when the possibility of enforced restrictions was first discussed it proved too delayed and a lockdown had become inevitable.

Repeated Mistakes

The report additionally pointed out how a number of of these failures – reacting with delay as well as underestimating the speed together with consequences of the virus's transmission – were later repeated later in 2020, as restrictions were lifted and subsequently belatedly restored because of infectious variants.

It calls this "unacceptable," stating that those in charge were unable to improve over multiple waves.

Overall Toll

The UK experienced among the deadliest coronavirus outbreaks in Europe, recording approximately 240 thousand pandemic fatalities.

The inquiry constitutes another from the ongoing investigation covering all aspects of the handling as well as response of the pandemic, that was launched previously and is expected to run through 2027.