Covid: "UK’s worst ever public health failures’:1000s unnecessary lost lives [Media]

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Covid response ‘one of UK’s worst ever public health failures’

Early handling and belief in ‘herd immunity’ led to more deaths, Commons inquiry finds
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Britain’s early handling of the coronavirus pandemic was one of the worst public health failures in UK history, with ministers and scientists taking a “fatalistic” approach that exacerbated the death toll, a landmark inquiry has found.

“Groupthink”, evidence of British exceptionalism and a deliberately “slow and gradualist” approach meant the UK fared “significantly worse” than other countries, according to the 151-page “Coronavirus: lessons learned to date” report led by two former Conservative ministers.

The crisis exposed “major deficiencies in the machinery of government”, with public bodies unable to share vital information and scientific advice impaired by a lack of transparency, input from international experts and meaningful challenge.

Despite being one of the first countries to develop a test for Covid in January 2020, the UK “squandered” its lead and “converted it into one of permanent crisis”. The consequences were profound, the report says. “For a country with a world-class expertise in data analysis, to face the biggest health crisis in 100 years with virtually no data to analyse was an almost unimaginable setback.”

Boris Johnson did not order a complete lockdown until 23 March 2020, two months after the government’s Sage committee of scientific advisers first met to discuss the crisis. “This slow and gradualist approach was not inadvertent, nor did it reflect bureaucratic delay or disagreement between ministers and their advisers. It was a deliberate policy – proposed by official scientific advisers and adopted by the governments of all of the nations of the UK,” the report says.

“It is now clear that this was the wrong policy, and that it led to a higher initial death toll than would have resulted from a more emphatic early policy. In a pandemic spreading rapidly and exponentially, every week counted.”
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Decisions on lockdowns and social distancing during the early weeks of the pandemic – and the advice that led to them – “rank as one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced”, the report concludes, stressing: “This happened despite the UK counting on some of the best expertise available anywhere in the world, and despite having an open, democratic system that allowed plentiful challenge.”

The report from the Commons science and technology committee and the health and social care committee draws on evidence from more than 50 witnesses, including the former health secretary Matt Hancock, the government’s chief scientific and medical advisers, and leading figures from the vaccine taskforce and NHS Test and Trace.

It celebrates some aspects of the UK’s Covid response, in particular the rapid development, approval and delivery of vaccines, and the world-leading Recovery trial that identified life-saving treatments, but is highly critical of other areas.

Some of the most serious early failings, the report suggests, resulted from apparent groupthink among scientists and ministers which led to “fatalism”. Greg Clark, the chair of the science and technology committee, said he dismissed the allegation that government policy sought to reach “herd immunity” through infection but the outcome came to be seen as the only viable option.

“It was more a reflection of fatalism,” Clark said. “That if you don’t have the prospect of a vaccine being developed, if you think people won’t obey instructions to lockdown for very long, and have a wholly inadequate ability to test, trace and isolate people, that is what you are left with.”

Medical staff

Government preparations for a pandemic focused on influenza, ‘the wrong type of disease’ MPs said. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
The “impossibility” of suppressing the virus was only challenged, the MPs say, when it became clear the NHS could be overwhelmed.

The report questions why international experts were not part of the UK scientific advisory process and why measures that worked in other countries were not brought in as a precaution, as a response was hammered out.

While Public Health England told the MPs it had formally studied and rejected the South Korean approach, no evidence was provided despite repeated requests.

“We must conclude that no formal evaluation took place, which amounts to an extraordinary and negligent omission given Korea’s success in containing the pandemic, which was well publicised at the time,” the report says.
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The MPs said the government’s decision to halt mass testing in March 2020 – days after the World Health Organization called for “painstaking contact tracing and rigorous quarantine of close contacts” – was a “serious mistake”.

When the test, trace and isolate system was rolled out it was “slow, uncertain and often chaotic”, “ultimately failed in its stated objective to prevent future lockdowns”, and “severely hampered the UK’s response to the pandemic”. The problem was compounded, the report adds, by the failure of public bodies to share data, including between national and local government.

Further criticism is levelled at poor protection in care homes, for black, Asian and minority ethnic groups and for people with learning disabilities.

Prof Trish Greenhalgh, of the University of Oxford, said the report hinted at a “less than healthy relationship” between government and its scientific advisory bodies. “It would appear that even senior government ministers were reluctant to push back on scientific advice that seemed to go against commonsense interpretations of the unfolding crisis,” she said.

“It would appear that Sage, Cobra, Public Health England and other bodies repeatedly dismissed the precautionary principle in favour of not taking decisive action until definitive evidence emerged and could be signed off as the truth.”

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said the report was damning. Hannah Brady, of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, said the report found the deaths of 150,000 people were “redeemed” by the success of the vaccine rollout.

“The report … is laughable and more interested in political arguments about whether you can bring laptops to Cobra meetings than it is in the experiences of those who tragically lost parents, partners or children to Covid-19. This is an attempt to ignore and gaslight bereaved families, who will see it as a slap in the face,” she said.



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Failure to challenge poor scientific advice during pandemic cost thousands of lives​


First major report into Government’s Covid-19 response says the error led to ‘one of most important public health failures in UK history’

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The elderly were 'just an afterthought': Devastating report by MPs into Covid pandemic lays bare Government blunders, the £37bn test and trace fiasco... and the shocking decisions that left thousands to die in care homes

Many thousands of care home residents died needlessly in the pandemic, a damning probe from MPs concludes today.

The first major inquiry into the Covid crisis says tragic losses in care homes were among the highest in Europe – and could have been prevented. Instead, the elderly were an ‘afterthought’.

The devastating finding is among a catalogue of failings detailed in a joint report from the health and science committees of the House of Commons.

The MPs say ministers were blinded by ‘groupthink’ among scientific advisers, who wrongly wanted to manage the spread of the virus, rather than suppress it.

They also castigate the ‘chaotic’ performance of the £37billion test and trace system.

Early decisions on lockdowns and social distancing rank as ‘one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced’.

The report blasts ‘light touch’ border controls when it was clear cases were coming from abroad.

The first major inquiry into the Covid crisis has concluded that many thousands of care home residents died needlessly in the pandemic. Pictured: Mike Carr and Katie Ffolloitt-Powell of the Patient Transport Services of South Central Ambulance Services help to settle an elderly non-COVID-19 patient into a care home after moving her from hospital, near Portsmouth


The first major inquiry into the Covid crisis has concluded that many thousands of care home residents died needlessly in the pandemic. Pictured: Mike Carr and Katie Ffolloitt-Powell of the Patient Transport Services of South Central Ambulance Services help to settle an elderly non-COVID-19 patient into a care home after moving her from hospital, near Portsmouth
The report is likely to anger families who lost loved ones and increase the pressure for the independent judge-led inquiry to begin as soon as possible. Other devastating findings include:

  • The UK’s response was too ‘narrowly and inflexibly based on a flu model’ that failed to learn lessons from Sars, Mers and Ebola;
  • This was a ‘serious early error’ when other countries were taking drastic action;
  • The lack of a proper test and trace system early on meant a full lockdown was ‘inevitable’ and should have come sooner;
  • Decision-making was dysfunctional with the exchange of important information between public bodies ‘inadequate’;
  • Death rates among black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and those with learning disabilities were unacceptably high.
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Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark, the Tory MPs who chair the two committees, said that while the vaccine drive had been ‘boldly planned and effectively executed’ there were also ‘big mistakes’.

One was that hospitals discharged patients into care homes without testing them for the virus because officials were focused on ‘protecting the NHS’.

The report describes Covid-19 as a ‘scourge of the elderly’ and says over-80s were 70 times more likely to die than those aged under 40. Yet in the first month of lockdown around 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes without being checked for Covid.

This had the devastating impact of ‘seeding’ the disease among the vulnerable. Almost one in four people who died from Covid-19 lived in a care home, with 41,675 residents succumbing to the virus up until this May.

The report notes: ‘The UK was not alone in suffering significant loss of life in care homes, but the tragic scale of loss was among the worst in Europe and could have been mitigated.’

This rapid discharge of people from hospitals into care homes ‘led to many thousands of deaths which could have been avoided’.

The inquiry also says Covid-19 exposed decades of underfunding and neglect of the entire social care system.

Extending to 151 pages, the report draws on evidence from former health secretary Matt Hancock, chief scientist Sir Patrick Vallance and chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty.

The report also found that the UK¿s response was too ¿narrowly and inflexibly based on a flu model¿ that failed to learn lessons from Sars, Mers and Ebola. Pictured: NHS workers in PPE take a patient at St Thomas' Hospital on April 10, 2020 in London


The report also found that the UK’s response was too ‘narrowly and inflexibly based on a flu model’ that failed to learn lessons from Sars, Mers and Ebola. Pictured: NHS workers in PPE take a patient at St Thomas' Hospital on April 10, 2020 in London
The damning findings of the report also show the UK¿s response was also ¿severely hampered¿ by the ¿slow, uncertain, and often chaotic performance¿ of the test, trace and isolate system. Pictured: warnings in Westminster in January of this year


The damning findings of the report also show the UK’s response was also ‘severely hampered’ by the ‘slow, uncertain, and often chaotic performance’ of the test, trace and isolate system. Pictured: warnings in Westminster in January of this year

[More detail: follow link above]



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Inquiry led by two House of Commons select committees condemns government for catalogue of delayed decisions and errors that resulted in tens of thousands of preventable UK deaths​

The government’s early handling of Covid-19 “amounted in practice” to the pursuit of herd immunity, a parliamentary report has found, adding that the delayed decision to lock down in spring last year ranks as one of the “most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced”.​

Ministers have repeatedly denied that the government sought to build up population immunity against the virus by allowing it to freely spread in the UK. However, findings from a cross-party inquiry show this was the “effective consequence” of the initial response to Covid, resulting in tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.​

Rather than seek to suppress the virus at the beginning of 2020, as other nations did, Britain sought to manage its spread through the community by slowly introducing social distancing measures without committing to a lockdown, the report said.​

More than 50 witnesses have contributed to the 150-page report, including ministers, NHS officials, government advisers and leading scientists. It concludes that:​

  • Government experts were fixated on influenza prior to 2020 and did not see coronaviruses as a threat to the UK
  • The government initially adopted a “deliberate policy” that “amounted in practice” to seeking herd immunity. The decision to manage, rather than suppress, infections proved fatal for tens of thousands
  • The abandonment of community testing on 12 March was a “seminal failure” and “cost many lives”
  • NHS Test and Trace has “failed to make a significant enough impact on the course of the pandemic to justify the level of public investment it received”
  • Social care has been overlooked by the government throughout the pandemic, while minority ethnic communities experienced higher levels of death in its early phase.

Labour said the report reinforced the immediate need for a public inquiry “so mistakes of such tragic magnitude are never repeated again”, while its authors said it was “vital” that lessons were learnt from the failings of the past 18 months.​

The cross-party report, led by two select committees for health and science, draws on 400 written statements and accounts from various officials involved in the UK response, including former health secretary Matt Hancock, chief medical officer Chris Whitty, and Dominic Cummings, the former chief adviser to the prime minister.​

It examines six key areas: pandemic preparedness prior to 2020; lockdowns and social distancing; testing and tracing; the impact of the crisis on social care and at-risk communities; and the rollout of the vaccines.​

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Prior to the emergence of Covid, the UK’s pandemic planning was too “narrowly and inflexibly based on a flu model” that failed to learn the lessons from Sars, Mers and Ebola, MPs heard.​

Former chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies told the inquiry there had been “groupthink”, with infectious disease experts not believing that “Sars, or another Sars, would get from Asia to us”. She likened it to a “form of British exceptionalism”.​

MPs concluded that, in the opening months of the crisis, those in power were operating through a “veil of ignorance” that was “partly self-inflicted”, with ministers and scientific advisers unwilling to learn from the experiences and tactics of other countries, notably in east Asia.​

This was an “inexcusable oversight”, the report said, adding that a culture of “groupthink” had taken hold in Downing Street, which should have been challenged. Rather than “doing everything possible to halt the virus” – like governments in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong – the government instead adopted a “slow and gradualist approach”.​

Guided by a desire to protect the economy, and the belief among Sage members that complete suppression of Covid would lead to a later second wave in 2020, the option of lockdown was initially dismissed in favour of gradually introducing social distancing polices that sought to moderate the pace of spread and flatten the curve of the first peak.​

“This amounted in practice to accepting that herd immunity by infection was the inevitable outcome”, given the lack of a vaccine and the UK’s limited testing capacity, the MPs said, meaning there were no real measures in place to protect the population from catching the virus.​

Even as late as 12 March, Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said that it was not possible to stop everyone being infected and nor was that a desirable objective.​

It was a “deliberate” and “dubious” policy, the MPs concluded, which was seriously mistaken in assuming that an “unknown and rampant virus could be regulated in such a precise way” and which “led to a higher initial death toll than would have resulted from a more emphatic early policy”.​

Officials leading the response failed to question the prevailing scientific consensus that had been established in government, the report added. Mr Cummings told the MPs he was “incredibly frightened” of challenging the “official plan”, while Mr Hancock said he “bitterly” regretted the failure to overrule scientific advice.​

Had the government changed tack and implemented lockdown just one week earlier, on 16 March, tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented, the inquiry was told.​

“As a result, decisions on lockdowns and social distancing during the early weeks of the pandemic – and the advice that led to them – rank as one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced,” the report concludes.​

It also says that the abandonment of community testing on 12 March was a “seminal failure” and “cost many lives”. NHS Test and Trace was established in May 2020, but its “chaotic” performance throughout the year “hampered” the UK’s response to Covid-19, culminating in the imposition of two more lockdowns.​

“Vast sums of taxpayers’ money were directed to Test and Trace, justified by the benefits of avoiding further lockdowns. But ultimately those lockdowns happened,” the report adds.​

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Another fact to sharpen the mind.


The UK has the second-largest coronavirus-related death toll in Europe, surpassed only by Russia
 
This graph from yesterdayTimes is damning I thought as it shows the comparison between neighbouring countries.

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According to Berkley, the opening up in stage 4 is a resounding success even though Starmer was against it (he used that to denigrate Starmer as Starmer wanted an early Autumn 2020 lockdown and clearly last July shows Starmer gets everything wrong 🤔).

800 deaths a week may seem 'good' compared with the 160,000 deaths to date. But 40,000 deaths a year is almost 4 times the average flu death rate and by any measure a public health disaster, particularly when other European countries seem to have significantly lower death rates.
 
Ah yes but let's not forget we record our deaths differently to everybody else, oh and we're the only honest country when it comes to reporting all other nations are lying.
 
It's absolutely damning. Anyone who could read a graph (particularly those being posted by John Burn-Murdoch of the FT) could see we were on the same trajectory as Italy. We had a massive warning signal and still ignored it. If randoms on twitter could work it out then you would expect the government to be able to.
 
This graph from yesterdayTimes is damning I thought as it shows the comparison between neighbouring countries.

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Amazing some of the comments on TV today about this - my fave is that it's ok to say all of this with hindsight. I clearly remember 'the public' locking down early in March when the Government didn't. To be honest I can recall at the time hundreds of voices pointing all these mistakes out at the time they were happening.

No wonder Johnson went on holiday. He should face a criminal investigation of some kind.
 
It didn’t need a learned expert just before our first lockdown to realise that the Cheltenham festival was a certain no no .
Yep, and there were still concerts and football matches going on, with Liverpool playing a Spanish team, IIRC, with thousands of fans travelling over. Spain was suffering massive infection rates at the time...might even have been in lockdown? Maybe not, because they probably wouldn't have been able to travel, presumably...
 
Yep, and there were still concerts and football matches going on, with Liverpool playing a Spanish team, IIRC, with thousands of fans travelling over. Spain was suffering massive infection rates at the time...might even have been in lockdown? Maybe not, because they probably wouldn't have been able to travel, presumably...
Yes. The day before the second leg at Anfield, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said "some things are more important than football" and urged players and supporters not to shake hands during the game.

That evening, Valencia's Champions League match with Atalanta was played without fans and the Spanish football federation moved La Liga games behind closed doors.

Arsenal's Premier League game against Manchester City, scheduled for that Wednesday, was postponed 'as a precautionary measure' after several Gunners players went into self-isolation.

By that point, Spain had the sixth highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the world - and numbers were rising quickly.

Hugo Condes the Spanish journalist said he expected to be turned back at the airport.
 
None of this is ancient history (we're still talking only a matter of months in the grand scheme of things) and any attempts for those responsible to give it the 'move on, look forward' treatment should be resisted.
 
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