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A critical official investigation into Britain's management to the pandemic crisis has concluded that the actions were "inadequate and belated," stating how enacting confinement measures just seven days before could have prevented over twenty thousand lives.

Main Conclusions of the Inquiry

Outlined in over seven hundred and fifty sections covering two volumes, the results paint a consistent narrative of procrastination, lack of action and an evident inability to absorb lessons.

The description regarding the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 is portrayed as particularly brutal, describing February as being "a lost month."

Official Failures Highlighted

• It raises questions about why the UK leader did not to convene a single session of the government's Cobra response team that month.
• Action to the virus largely stopped during the half-term holiday week.
• During the second week of that March, the circumstances was "little short of catastrophic," due to a lack of preparation, a lack of testing and therefore no understanding of the degree to which the coronavirus was spreading.

Potential Impact

Even though recognizing the fact that the decision to enforce confinement was without precedent and hugely difficult, taking additional measures to curb the circulation of Covid sooner could have meant such measures could have been prevented, or alternatively proved shorter.

Once confinement became unavoidable, the investigation noted, had it been enforced on March 16, modelling showed that would have reduced the number of lives lost within England in the earliest phase of the pandemic by nearly 50%, equating to 23,000 fatalities avoided.

The omission to recognize the extent of the threat, or the urgency of response it required, meant the fact that when the option of compulsory confinement was first discussed it was already too late so that a lockdown became inevitable.

Repeated Mistakes

The investigation additionally highlighted how several of the same errors – responding too slowly as well as underestimating the speed and consequences of the pandemic's progression – were later repeated in the latter part of 2020, as measures were eased and then delayed reimposed due to spreading mutations.

The report describes such repetition "unjustifiable," stating that officials did not to learn lessons through repeated outbreaks.

Total Impact

The UK endured one of the deadliest pandemic outbreaks across Europe, with about 240,000 virus-related lives lost.

This investigation represents the latest by the national review into each part of the response and response to Covid, which began in previous years and is scheduled to proceed through 2027.