The UK’s failure to do more to stop Covid spreading early in the pandemic was one of the country’s worst public health failures, a report by MPs says.
The government approach – backed by its scientists – was to try to manage the situation and in effect achieve herd immunity by infection, it said.
This led to a delay in introducing the first lockdown, costing thousands of lives.
But the report highlights successes too, including the vaccination rollout.
The report described the whole approach to the vaccination programme – from the research and development through to the rollout of the jabs – as “one of the most effective initiatives in UK history”.
Campaigners criticised the report for failing to focus on those who had died, saying references to practical issues, including problems with laptops, was “laughable”.
The findings are detailed in the report Coronavirus: Lessons learned to date from the Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, which contain MPs from all parties.
Across 150 pages, the report covers a variety of successes and failings.
It predominantly focuses on the response to the pandemic in England. The committees did not look at steps taken individually by Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
MPs call the pandemic, which has claimed more than 150,000 lives in the UK and nearly five million worldwide so far, the “biggest peacetime challenge” for a century.
Some of the most serious early failings, the report suggests, resulted from apparent “group-think” among scientists and ministers – which meant the UK was not as open to different approaches on earlier lockdowns, border controls and test and trace as it should have been.
