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October 12,2021

Anna Murray 

One of the biggest failures of the government's approach, according to a report, was an initial policy at the start of the pandemic of attempting to manage the spread of Covid rather than stopping it entirely. Thousands of people died as a result of delays and errors made by both ministers and their scientific advisers at the start of the COVID pandemic. Since the pandemic began, more than 160,000 deaths in the UK have been recorded, with COVID-19 being mentioned on the death certificate. The United Kingdom has Europe's second-highest coronavirus-related death toll, trailing only Russia.

The "Coronavirus: lessons learned to date" report, published on October 12 by the UK Parliament's House of Commons, Science and Technology Committee, and Health and Social Care Committee, examined the initial UK response to the COVID pandemic. The comprehensive report chastised the British government for failing to act quickly enough in its initial COVID-19 response, allowing the virus to quickly spread through communities and kill thousands.

The 150-page report includes 38 recommendations to the government and public bodies, testimony from more than 50 witnesses, including Right Honorable Matt Hancock MP, and over 400 written submissions. The joint inquiry, which began in October 2020, investigated six key areas of the country's response to COVID-19: the country's preparedness for a pandemic; the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as border controls, social distancing, and lockdowns to control the pandemic; the use of test, trace, and isolate strategies; the impact of the pandemic on social care; the impact of the pandemic on specific communities; and the procurement and roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines.