The UK government made a succession of mistakes in its handling of the Covid pandemic, according to a parliamentary report.
It delayed implementing a lockdown and adopted a ‘fatalistic approach’ in how to slow the spread of the virus, MPs say in the report.
They were critical of the government’s early response to accept a ‘herd immunity’ policy before that idea was scrapped.
It made another ‘serious error’ by stopping community testing in March 2020, while the test-and-trace system was ‘often chaotic.’
It led to many unnecessary deaths it said.
"You had the brilliance of the vaccine roll-out, scientifically and administratively. But then you had real failures such as the lack of testing, the lack of data," said Greg Clark, Chair of the Science and Technology Committee.
He said the management ‘seemed to stumble from crisis to crisis,’ and failed to predict obvious problems ahead such as a rush for testing kits in September 2020 when children returned to schools.
MPs were also critical of the COBRA crisis management committee of top government officials and experts.
