U.K. Failed in Handling of Covid Pandemic, Inquiry Finds

Britain’s government “failed” the country’s citizens in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, a damning report from an official public inquiry said on Thursday, partly because officials had prepared for “the wrong pandemic.”

The arrival of Covid-19 in 2020 exposed flaws in Britain’s public health system and its pandemic preparedness that had been ignored for years, the report said. During the early waves of infections, Britain’s per capita death rate was among the highest in Europe, eventually leading to more than 225,000 deaths in total, according to official data.

“Had the U.K. been better prepared for and more resilient to the pandemic, some of that financial and human cost may have been avoided,” the report said.

Before the spread of the coronavirus, the authorities in Britain worked on the assumption that the country had a resilient health care system and a strong pandemic plan that was prepared to meet a disease outbreak head on. That was wrong, the report found.

Britain had a plan, but it was “outdated and lacked adaptability,” the report said.

It was also too focused on the possibility of a flu pandemic. “Although it was understandable for the U.K. to prioritize pandemic influenza, this should not have been to the effective exclusion of other potential pathogen outbreaks,” the report said.

In addition, the report said, too many different organizations had responsibility for pandemic preparedness, meaning the overall system was “labyrinthine” and hard to navigate. It also found that the plan, dating from 2011, failed to take into account growing inequalities in health care provision, and the worsening health of vulnerable groups in the population, after years of government cuts during the 2010s.