🔗 Share this article Lockdown One Week Sooner Could Have Prevented 23,000 Deaths, Covid Report Finds A harsh official report into Britain's handling to the Covid emergency has concluded that the actions were "insufficient and delayed," stating how imposing confinement measures only one week earlier might have saved over 23,000 lives. Key Findings from the Report Outlined across more than seven hundred fifty sections across two parts, the findings portray a clear story of hesitation, failure to act and an apparent failure to understand from experience. The narrative regarding the beginning of the coronavirus in the first months of 2020 is portrayed as particularly critical, calling February as being "a lost month." Ministerial Shortcomings Highlighted It questions the reasons why Boris Johnson neglected to lead any session of the Cobra response team that month. The response to Covid largely paused during the school break. In the second week in March, the circumstances was described as "little short of calamitous," due to no proper plan, no testing and thus no understanding regarding the extent to which the coronavirus had spread. Potential Impact Although recognizing that the choice to implement confinement was historic and exceptionally hard, enacting further steps to slow the transmission of Covid earlier would have allowed such measures might have been avoided, or alternatively proved shorter. Once restrictions became unavoidable, the investigation noted, if it had been introduced a week earlier, estimates indicated this could have cut the number of deaths in England during the initial wave of the virus by almost half, equating to over 20,000 fatalities avoided. The inability to understand the extent of the risk, and the urgency for action it demanded, meant the fact that by the time the possibility of compulsory confinement was initially contemplated it proved belated so that restrictions had become inevitable. Repeated Mistakes The report also highlighted how several of the same mistakes – responding with delay as well as downplaying the speed and consequences of the virus's transmission – were later repeated in the latter part of 2020, as measures were removed and subsequently belatedly reintroduced in the face of infectious mutations. It labels such repetition "unacceptable," noting that officials were unable to improve during multiple outbreaks. Overall Toll The UK suffered among the worst pandemic epidemics in Europe, recording around 240 thousand Covid-related deaths. This investigation is the second by the public investigation into each part of the handling as well as management to Covid, that was launched in previous years and is due to proceed into 2027.