Failures and flaws that left Britain at the mercy of pandemic

THE Government failed its citizens and may have cost lives with “fatal strategic flaws” and other shortcomings to prepare for the Covid pandemic, according to a bombshell report today.

- Daniel Keane and Nicholas Cecil

London and the rest of the country was left vulnerable after ministers and officials planned for a massive flu outbreak, rather than the deadly virus which hit with such devastating force.

In a series of scathing findings, the Covid Inquiry’s first report concluded:

⬤ The UK prepared for the “wrong pandemic”.

⬤ There were “fatal strategic flaws” underpinning the assessment of the risks faced by the UK, and how they could be addressed.

⬤ There was a “damaging absence” of focus on measures to deploy against a pandemic, in particular a system that could be “scaled up to test, trace and isolate” Covid carriers.

⬤ The Government’s only pandemic strategy, from 2011, was “outdated and lacked adaptability”. It was “virtually abandoned” when the pandemic hit.

⬤ Institutions and structures responsible for emergency planning were “labyrinthine in their complexity”.

⬤ Emergency planning generally failed to sufficiently consider pre-existing health and societal inequalities and deprivation. Poorer parts of London were particularly hit by the pandemic.

⬤ There was a failure to learn sufficiently from past civil emergency exercises and diesase outbreaks.