UK's Covid Lockdown Delay Led To 23,000 Excess Deaths: Report

The UK's government-level response to the COVID pandemic was often a case of "too little, too late", and a week's delay in imposing a mandatory lockdown during the first wave in 2020 led to approximately 23,000 excess deaths, an official inquiry concluded in London on Thursday.

The report entitled 'Core UK decision-making and political governance' marks the second module of a phased probe into the UK's response to the coronavirus pandemic being led by Baroness Heather Hallett.

The UK officially recorded more than 235,000 deaths involving COVID-19 up to the end of 2023, and the latest report finds that this figure could have been lower if all four devolved governments of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern England had not "failed to appreciate the scale of the threat or the urgency of response it demanded".

"When they did realise the scale of the threat, politicians and administrators in the UK government and the devolved administrations were presented with unenviable choices as to how to respond," said Hallett. "Whatever decision they took, there was often no right answer or good outcome. They also had to make decisions in conditions of extreme pressure. Nonetheless, I can summarise my findings of the response as 'too little, too late'.

"The Inquiry has therefore identified a number of key lessons learned to inform the response to a future pandemic. In all, I make 19 key recommendations that I believe will better protect the UK in any future pandemic and improve decision-making in a crisis," she said. Her recommendations include the need for urgent reform and clarification of the structures for decision-making during emergencies within each of the four governments.

Other key recommendations include ensuring that decisions and their implications are clearly communicated to the public, with laws and guidance made easy to understand.

There should be greater parliamentary scrutiny of the use of emergency powers, as well as improved consideration in an emergency of the impact that decisions might have on those most at risk. Module 2 of the 'UK COVID-19 Inquiry' marks the second of its 10 investigations and focuses on the UK's governance and political decision-making during the pandemic.

The Inquiry had heard testimonies from serving and former senior politicians, including former prime minister Boris Johnson, who was in charge at 10 Downing Street at the time, and leading scientists, key medical professionals, civil servants and all relevant experts.

"The UK government introduced advisory restrictions on 16 March 2020, including self-isolation, household quarantine and social distancing. Had restrictions been introduced sooner, the mandatory lockdown from 23 March might have been shorter or not necessary at all," the report finds.

"This lack of urgency and the huge rise in infections made a mandatory lockdown inevitable. It should have been introduced one week earlier. Had a mandatory lockdown been imposed on or immediately after 16 March 2020, modelling shows that in England alone there would have been approximately 23,000 fewer deaths in the first wave up until 1 July 2020," it notes.

While Hallett acknowledges the pressure on politicians and others during the pandemic to make tough decisions about how resources should be used, she stresses that if the UK had been better prepared, the nation could have avoided some of the "significant and long-lasting" financial, economic and human costs of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group said it was "devastating" to think of the lives that could have been saved under different leadership. Dominic Cummings, a close aide of Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street at the time, comes under particular attack as a "destabilising influence" at the heart of decision-making in Hallett's report.

 "His behaviour contributed significantly to a culture of fear, mutual suspicion and distrust that poisoned the atmosphere in 10 Downing Street and undermined the authority of the Prime Minister," it states.

Cummings was found to have been "contributing to a culture of fear", with his boss Boris Johnson failing to "exercise proper leadership in rectifying the toxic and chaotic culture adversely affecting decision-making" during the pandemic.

Cummings took to social media to distance himself from the report's findings just before it was released to point out that he had declined to participate. "It is important for the public to realise that on most of the big questions, the 'experts', including the senior scientists, were completely wrong in Q1 2020. They advised us to do almost nothing," he said.        

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