A very harsh parliamentary report on the management of the pandemic by Boris Johnson

The criticisms are damning for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s team. A parliamentary report released on Tuesday claims the UK government and its scientific advisers made serious mistakes and accumulated significant delays in dealing with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. It is even, according to this study, “one of the biggest public health failures that the United Kingdom has ever known”.

The report, produced by two parliamentary committees after months of hearings, says Boris Johnson’s government has “deliberately” taken a “gradual and gradual approach” instead of more drastic measures. This “bad” decision, which made the United Kingdom one of the countries most affected in Europe by the coronavirus with almost 138.00 dead, is due in particular to the opinions of scientists who advised Downing Street.

Late decisions

Until March 23, the ministers “only (sought to) moderate the rate of infection” in the population rather than completely stop its spread “because of official scientific advice, and not against it”, says the report. The scientists making up the group responsible for advising the government were “unanimous” on March 13 “on the fact that measures aimed at completely suppressing the spread of Covid-19 will cause a second peak”.

It is “astonishing” that it took them so long to realize that full containment was necessary, say the parliamentarians, even with overwhelming evidence, such as a model from Imperial College London who claimed that ‘an unchecked epidemic could lead to 500,000 deaths, showing that containment was “inevitable”.

MEPs consider certain measures unfounded

“The containment and social distancing decisions made in the first few weeks of the pandemic – and the advice leading up to them – are one of the biggest public health failures the UK has ever seen.” , said the deputies. The latter also castigated the decision not to test the elderly leaving the hospital before they returned to their retirement home and affirmed that certain measures (curfew at 10 p.m. for pubs, ban on outdoor children’s sport) were not scientifically based.

The picture is not completely dark, however. “The UK’s response has combined great mistakes and great successes”, such as the vaccination program, said in a joint statement Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt, chairmen of the two committees in charge of the report. According to them, “it is essential to learn the lessons to be as efficient as possible during the remainder of the pandemic and into the future”.