U.K. Failed in Handling of Covid Pandemic, Inquiry Report Says

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U.K. ******* in Handling of Covid Pandemic, Inquiry Report Says

Britain’s government “*******” the country’s citizens in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, a damning report from an official public inquiry said on Thursday, partly because officials had prepared for “the wrong pandemic.”

The arrival of Covid-19 in 2020 exposed flaws in Britain’s public health system and its pandemic preparedness that had been ignored for years, the

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. During the early waves of infections, Britain’s per capita ****** rate was among the highest in Europe, eventually leading to more than 225,000 deaths in total, according to official data.

“Had the U.K. been better prepared for and more resilient to the pandemic, some of that financial and human cost may have been avoided,” the report said.

Before the spread of the coronavirus, the authorities in Britain worked on the assumption that the country had a resilient health care system and a strong pandemic plan that was prepared to meet a ******** outbreak head on. That was wrong, the report found.

Britain had a plan, but it was “outdated and lacked adaptability,” the report said.

It was also too focused on the possibility of a flu pandemic. “Although it was understandable for the U.K. to prioritize pandemic influenza, this should not have been to the effective exclusion of other potential pathogen outbreaks,” the report said.

In addition, the report said, too many different organizations had responsibility for pandemic preparedness, meaning the overall system was “labyrinthine” and hard to navigate. It also found that the plan, dating from 2011, ******* to take into account growing inequalities in health care provision, and the worsening health of vulnerable groups in the population, after years of government cuts during the 2010s.

The report is the first from an inquiry established in 2021 by the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, to examine Britain’s response to the pandemic. The inquiry team met with dozens of experts and considered more than 200 witness statements. It is led by Heather Carol Hallett, a retired judge who also led the inquest into the 2005 London bombings

Mr. Johnson, who was prime minister during the pandemic, also appeared before the inquiry, as did his former senior adviser Dominic Cummings.

Part of the ********, the report said, was because of poor communication between government ministers and experts. Ministers, who are political appointees, did not have access to a broad enough range of scientific research and opinions that would have informed their policies, and advisers did not feel confident about expressing dissenting views.

“The advice offered to ministers and international bodies may well have been affected by a degree of ‘groupthink’,” the report said.

The report found that the disaster response let down people with vulnerabilities like chronic ******** and disability, and ******* to properly work with communities of ******* minorities. These groups, the report said, were disproportionately affected by Covid.

The inquiry also said that Brexit — Britain’s departure from the ********* Union — had led to the allocation of resources away from pandemic preparedness, especially in 2018 and 2019 when officials scrambled to draw up a contingency plan for medicine, food and fuel shortages in a “no-deal” Brexit scenario.

Along with its criticism of the British government and its agencies, the report also made 10 recommendations to prepare for the next pandemic, which included planning for a wider range of scenarios and creating a more coordinated emergency response for a future pandemic.

“It is not a question of ‘if’ another pandemic will strike but ‘when,’” Baroness Hallett wrote in her introduction to the report.

As a result, “there must be ******** reform,” the report said. “Never again can a ******** be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, who won power earlier this month after 14 years of *************-led government, said he would make pandemic preparedness a “top priority.”

A survivors’ lobby group, the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, welcomed the report but said it had not addressed underlying inequalities.

“Even the best ***** plans won’t save lives unless they address, rather than just account for, the conditions that led to our inability to respond quickly, equitably and effectively,” the group said in a statement.

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