A lockdown could have been avoided and other important findings

The long-awaited independent report into how well or poorly the government has handled the Covid pandemic was published.

The chair of the inquiry, former judge Baroness Hallett, said the UK’s response could be summed up as “too little, too late”.

The report examines whether the lockdowns were timely and appropriate and what impact rule-breaking at the heart of government had on public trust.

Here are some of the key findings.

The lockdown could have been avoided if measures such as social distancing and isolation of people with symptoms and their household members had been introduced before mid-March 2020, the report said.

But when the ministers took action, it was already too late and a lockdown was inevitable, they say.

By the end of January 2020 “it should have been clear that the virus posed a serious and imminent threat”, while February 2020 was “a lost month” and the lack of urgency in government overall was “inexcusable”, the inquiry says.

Voluntary measures were introduced on March 16, 2020, followed seven days later by a full curfew.

Introducing the lockdown a week earlier on March 16 would have meant 23,000 fewer deaths in England in the first wave, modeling suggests. This would have meant 48% fewer deaths in the first wave.

The report describes a “toxic and chaotic” culture at the heart of the UK government during its response to the pandemic, which it says has undermined the quality of advice and decision-making.

While a number of senior leaders and advisers are said to have exhibited poor behavior, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings is described as a “destabilizing influence”.

It said his actions “contributed significantly to a culture of fear, mutual distrust and mistrust that poisoned the atmosphere at 10 Downing Street.”

Then-Prime Minister Johnson has also been criticized for excessive optimism in the face of the looming pandemic and “vacillations” in key lockdown decisions.

The report said Johnson “should have recognized sooner that this was an emergency that required the Prime Minister’s leadership to add urgency to the response.”

Rather, he did not recognize the urgency of the situation, “because of his optimism, nothing would come of it,” it is said.

Meanwhile, Baroness Hallett has accused his health secretary Matt Hancock of not being “open” enough about the UK’s ability to deal with the virus.

While the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 undoubtedly saved lives, they also “left lasting scars on society and the economy, stalled normal childhood, delayed diagnosis and treatment of other health problems, and exacerbated societal inequalities,” it says.

The report said children were not given enough priority and ministers did not adequately consider the impact of school closures.

It says the vast majority of children are not at risk of serious direct harm from Covid, “but have suffered greatly from the closure of schools and the requirement to stay at home”.

None of Britain’s four countries were adequately prepared for the sudden and enormous task of educating most children at home, the research says.

The report says that rule-breaking by politicians and their advisers has undermined public trust in decision-making and significantly increased the risk that people will not comply with the measures taken.

It lists events such as Cummings’ trip to Durham and Barnard Castle in March 2020; two visits to a second home during the lockdown by the chief medical officer for Scotland, Dr. Catherine Calderwood; and visits to the home of scientific adviser Prof Neil Ferguson by a woman he had a relationship with during lockdown.

Until the time details of Parties and social events in Downing Street There was a “public outcry” in November 2021, the report says.

Johnson and Rishi Sunak then received fines for their actions.

All four nations have been criticized for their planning and decision-making, which the inquiry found was hampered by a lack of trust between Boris Johnson and first ministers

The research found that at the start of 2020, while all four countries lacked urgency in their response, the devolved administrations were too reliant on the UK government leading the response.

The four nations then differed in their strategy for exiting the first national lockdown, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland taking a more cautious approach – but this was undermined by the lack of restrictions on travel from England, where many restrictions had been eased.

The report finds that in autumn 2020, Holyrood was the only government to have learned lessons from the first lockdown and introduced tough, locally targeted measures that helped avoid the need for a national lockdown.

On the other hand, decision-making in Northern Ireland has been described as “chaotic”, while the Welsh Government’s approach resulted in the highest age-standardised mortality rate of the four nations between August and December 2020.

The report contains a long list of recommendations including:

• Establish structures to improve communication between the four nations in the event of an emergency
• Better consider the impact decisions might have on people – both through the disease and the measures taken to manage it
• Create expert groups to advise on economic and social impacts, not just the science
• Ensure that decisions – and their impacts – are clearly communicated to the public
• Allow for greater parliamentary scrutiny of emergency powers

The government does not have to adopt the inquiry’s recommendations, but it does have to act on them, which could influence future policy.

The inquiry has already reported on Britain’s preparedness for the pandemic and concluded that the The UK has failed its citizens with flawed plans.