There would have been about 23,000 fewer deaths in England during the first wave of COVID-19 if the UK Government had imposed lockdown a week earlier, according to the findings of the public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic.
Delivering the report of the second module in the inquiry, chair Baroness Hallett said the response from the UK Government, and the devolved nations, was ‘too little too late’.
The report concluded that governments ‘failed to appreciate the scale of the threat or the urgency of response it demanded in the early part of 2020’. It criticised then-prime minister Boris Johnson’s and then-health secretary Matt Hancock’s handling of the crisis and the ‘toxic and chaotic culture’ at the centre of UK Government.
It said that ‘had restrictions been introduced sooner, the mandatory lockdown from 23 March might have been shorter or not necessary at all’.
Modelling shows that, in England, there would have been approximately 23,000 fewer deaths in the first wave, up to 1 July 2020, had a mandatory lockdown been imposed a week earlier, on 16 March 2020. Put another way, this would have reduced deaths in the first wave by 48 per cent.
Lack of urgency
COVID-19 was responsible for the deaths of 230,000 people in the UK.
The BMA, which is a core participant in the UK COVID inquiry, says the module 2 report ‘lays bare the catastrophic impact’ of governments’ ‘lack of urgency and collective complacency’.
Agreeing with Baroness Hallett’s view, the association says governments did ‘far too little, too late’ in the first few weeks of the pandemic.
Tom Dolphin, chair of BMA council, said: ‘As doctors who were looking after the sickest patients, my colleagues and I will recognise the report's findings a terrible indictment of the Government’s almost incomprehensible failings and incompetence.
‘The Government told the country and NHS workers that the measures they were putting in place would stop the NHS becoming overwhelmed; the report says otherwise. It also talks of, "misleading assurances from the Department of Health and Social Care that the UK was well prepared for a pandemic". On the front line, doctors and nurses could see the tidal wave of sick patients coming our way as we scrambled to be ready, even while the then prime minister was talking about shaking hands with patients.’