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A damning independent investigation into Britain's management of the coronavirus situation has concluded which the response were "inadequate and belated," stating how implementing restrictions even a single week before could have prevented over 23,000 lives.

Key Findings from the Inquiry

Outlined through more than 750 sections covering two parts, the findings depict a clear picture of delay, failure to act as well as an apparent failure to learn from experience.

The account about the start of the pandemic in the first months of 2020 is portrayed as particularly critical, describing February as being "a lost month."

Official Shortcomings Emphasized

• It raises questions about why Boris Johnson did not to lead a single gathering of the emergency crisis committee that month.
• Action to the virus effectively stopped throughout the school break.
• By the second week of that March, the situation had become "nearly calamitous," due to no proper plan, insufficient testing and thus no clear picture about the degree to which Covid had spread.

Potential Impact

While recognizing the fact that the choice to enforce restrictions was historic as well as exceptionally hard, taking other action to reduce the transmission of Covid more quickly would have allowed such measures may not have been necessary, or at least proved of shorter duration.

By the time restrictions was inevitable, the inquiry authors noted, had it been introduced on 16 March, modelling indicated this might have lowered the count of fatalities within England in the first wave of the pandemic by around half, representing over 20,000 deaths prevented.

The omission to appreciate the magnitude of the threat, or the urgency for measures it necessitated, meant the fact that when the chance of compulsory confinement was initially contemplated it was already too delayed and a lockdown became inevitable.

Ongoing Failures

The report also noted that several similar failures – responding belatedly and minimizing the speed and impact of Covid’s spread – were then repeated subsequently in 2020, as controls were removed only to be late restored in the face of contagious variants.

The report describes such repetition "unacceptable," stating that those in charge failed to learn lessons during repeated outbreaks.

Final Count

The United Kingdom suffered one of the worst pandemic outbreaks within Europe, amounting to about 240,000 virus-related lives lost.

This investigation is the latest by the public inquiry into each part of the handling and response of the pandemic, which began in previous years and is due to continue through 2027.