‘Too little, too late’ - the UK concludes the second part of its Covid inquiry

The UK’s second report on the Covid inquiry has emerged with 19 recommendations to guide government thinking.

The report looks at the response across the UK’s central government and devolved administrations (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and follows on from the first report on the UK’s resilience and preparedness.

The inquiry’s chair, Baroness Hallett, said that all four governments failed to appreciate the scale of the threat or the urgency it demanded. While recognising that some of the responses could be described as “too little, too late”, she also acknowledged that administrations faced unenviable choices and that decisions were taken under conditions of extreme pressure. In particular, she describes February 2020 as “a lost month”.

Like many countries, the UK did not appreciate the scale of the threat in early 2020, a view compounded by misleading...

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