This led to a delay in the nationwide lockdown, which was imposed in the UK on March 23, 2020. The report said there was a degree of “groupthink” between official scientific advisers and the government in which ministers did little to question the advice they received and that meant the UK was “not as open to approaches being taken elsewhere.” Other countries and places in Europe and Asia, including China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and South Korea, implemented strict border controls, social distancing and early lockdowns as soon as cases emerged - some as early as January 2020 - to control the pandemic. The UK has reported 138,167 fatalities from Covid-19 since the pandemic started, according to Johns Hopkins University data - more than any other country in Western Europe. “This amounted in practice to accepting that herd immunity by infection was the inevitable outcome,” the report said, with the likely result in “hundreds of thousands of deaths.” The report said the government - backed by scientific advisers - made a “serious early error” during the first three months of the pandemic by not rigorously moving to stop the virus’ spread, an approach adopted by many East and Southeast Asian countries. It contains 38 recommendations to the government and public bodies, and draws on evidence from more than 50 witnesses and 400 written submissions. The 150-page report is the result of a cross-party inquiry, which began in October 2020, examining the initial UK response to the pandemic.
One bright spot for the UK government, however, is the speedy and effective deployment of its vaccine program, the report highlighted.
The report also said there was little interest in learning from the experiences of other countries, such as those in East Asia that were the first to deal with the pandemic. They also criticized a delayed lockdown, failures in the UK’s contact-tracing program, and a lack of attention given to the most vulnerable, specifically those in the social care sector and at-risk communities - namely Black, Asian and other ethnic minorities. The report, an initial assessment by the British Parliament’s Health and Social Care, and Science and Technology committees, said the United Kingdom’s Covid response was slow and “reactive.”Īmong the biggest failures of the government’s approach was an initial policy at the start of the pandemic of trying to manage the spread of Covid, rather than stop it spreading altogether, the lawmakers said.
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