The response of the UK’s four governments to the pandemic was a "repeated case of too little, too late" and tens of thousands of lives, including 23,000 deaths in England, could have been saved had mandatory lockdowns been introduced faster, the COVID-19 Inquiry has found.
Baroness Heather Hallett, the chair of the inquiry, admitted in her summary that politicians in the government and devolved administrations were forced to make decisions where "there was often no right answer or good outcome".
"Nonetheless," she said, "I can summarise my findings of the response as ‘too little, too late’".
The report says all four governments "failed to appreciate the scale of the threat or the urgency of response it demanded" in the early part of 2020 and that, despite "clear signs" that the virus was spreading globally, "all four nations failed to take sufficiently timely and effective action".
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