'Citizens failed over Covid preparation'

THE UK Government and the civil service “failed” the public due to “significant flaws” in preparing for the Covid-19 pandemic, a public inquiry has found.

In its first report into preparedness for a pandemic, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry said there was a “damaging absence of focus” on the measures and infrastructure that would be needed to deal with a fast-spreading disease, even though a coronavirus outbreak at pandemic scale “was foreseeable”.

A major flaw, according to the inquiry, was the lack of “a system that could be scaled up to test, trace and isolate” people.

The report added: “Despite reams of documentation, planning guidance was insufficiently robust and flexible, and policy documentation was outdated, unnecessarily bureaucratic and infected by jargon.”