Covid research: lockdown could have been avoided and other key findings

The long-awaited independent report into how well or badly the government handled the Covid pandemic has been published.

The chair of the inquiry, former judge Baroness Hallett, said the UK’s response could be summarized as “too little, too late”.

The report analyzes whether the lockdowns were timely and reasonable, and what impact non-compliance within the government had on public trust.

These are some of the main findings. We are still reading the 800-page document and will continue to update this page.

The lockdown could have been avoided if measures such as social distancing and isolating people with symptoms along with members of their household had been introduced before mid-March 2020, the report said.

But by the time ministers took action it was too late and lockdown was inevitable, he says.

By the end of January 2020 “it should have been clear that the virus posed a serious and immediate threat”, while February 2020 was “a wasted month” and the general lack of urgency in government was “inexcusable”, the investigation concluded.

Voluntary measures were introduced on 16 March 2020, followed by full home confinement seven days later.

According to the models, imposing the lockdown a week earlier, on March 16, would have meant 23,000 fewer deaths in England in the first wave. This would have equivalent to 48% fewer deaths in the first wave.

The report described a “toxic and chaotic” culture at the heart of the UK government during its response to the pandemic, which it said affected the quality of advice and decision-making.

While he says a number of senior leaders and advisers showed bad behaviour, Boris Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings is described as a “destabilizing influence”.

It says his actions contributed “significantly to a culture of fear, mutual suspicion and mistrust that poisoned the atmosphere at 10 Downing Street.”

Then-Prime Minister Johnson is also criticized for his excessive optimism in the face of the impending pandemic and “swing” in key lockdown decisions.

The report said Johnson “should have understood sooner that this was an emergency requiring the Prime Minister’s leadership to inject urgency into the response.”

Instead, he failed to appreciate the urgency of the situation “because of his optimism, it wouldn’t amount to anything,” he says.

Meanwhile, Baroness Hallett accuses her Health Secretary Matt Hancock of not being “candid” enough about the UK’s ability to tackle the virus.

While the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 undoubtedly saved lives, they also “left lasting scars on society and the economy, paralyzed normal childhoods, delayed diagnosis and treatment of other health problems, and exacerbated social inequalities,” it says.

Children were not given enough priority and ministers did not adequately consider the consequences of school closures, the report said.

It says the vast majority of children were not at risk of serious direct harm from Covid “but suffered greatly from school closures and being forced to stay at home”.

None of the four nations of the United Kingdom were adequately prepared for the sudden and enormous task of educating the majority of children at home, the research adds.

The report says failure to follow the rules by politicians and their advisers undermined public confidence in decision-making and significantly increased the risk of people failing to comply with measures being put in place.

It lists events such as Cummings’ trip to Durham and Barnard Castle in March 2020; two visits to a second home during lockdown by Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood; and visits to the home of scientific adviser Professor Neil Ferguson by a woman with whom he had a relationship during lockdown.

When details of parties and social events at Downing Street emerged in November 2021, there was a “public outcry”, the report says.

Johnson and Rishi Sunak were subsequently given fixed penalty notices for their actions.

The four nations were criticized for their planning and decision-making, which the inquiry found was hampered by a lack of trust between Boris Johnson and the prime ministers.

The research found that in early 2020, while the four nations lacked urgency in their response, the devolved administrations were too reliant on the UK government to lead the response.

The four nations then differed in their strategy for exiting the first national lockdown, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland taking a more cautious approach, but this was undermined by the absence of restrictions on travel from England, where many restrictions had been eased.

The report concludes that in autumn 2020, Holyrood was the only government to learn the lessons of the first lockdown and introduce tough, locally-led measures that helped avoid the need for a nationwide lockdown.

On the other hand, decision-making in Northern Ireland was described as “chaotic”, while the Welsh government’s approach resulted in the highest age-standardised mortality rate of the four nations between August and December 2020.

The report offers a long list of recommendations, including:

• Establish structures to improve communication between the four nations during an emergency.
• Improve consideration of the impact that decisions could have on people, both due to the disease and the measures taken to respond to it.
• Create expert groups to advise on the economic and social implications, not just the science.
• Ensure that decisions (and their implications) are clearly communicated to the public.
• Allow greater parliamentary scrutiny of emergency powers

The government does not have to adopt the research’s recommendations, but it must respond to them, which could shape future policies.

The inquiry has already reported on Britain’s preparedness for the pandemic and concluded that the UK failed citizens with flawed plans.