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The UK “planned for the wrong pandemic” and was ill-equipped to respond to coronavirus as preparations for a no-deal Brexit had diverted the state’s attention from potential public health crises, the Covid-19 inquiry has found.
In her first report, inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett said on Thursday that government pandemic planning since 2011 had focused too heavily on influenza amid expectation that flu would cause a mass outbreak of disease.
This strategy failed to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, which began in late 2019, Hallett found, saying it was “outdated” and “virtually abandoned on its first encounter with the pandemic”.
“The UK planned for the wrong pandemic,” she added in the 240-page report.
The inquiry was shown evidence of ministers referring to “reprioritisation” of resources in the years leading up to the pandemic, which saw civil servants put aside planning on potential public health crises to work on contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit.
Britain’s system of resilience and preparedness was “under constant strain” in the period, with officials forced to stop “work on one potential emergency to concentrate on another”, the report said.
The official Covid inquiry is examining the government’s response to the virus that shut swaths of the economy, upended social life and has so far killed about 230,000 people in Britain and infected many millions more.
It is due to run until the summer of 2026, and the first of nine modules focused on how ready the UK was for a pandemic, and the resilience of its institutions and public health in late 2019.
Hallett rejected claims given in evidence by UK officials that the country was as well-prepared as anywhere in the world to deal with a pandemic before Covid struck.
“In reality, the UK was ill-prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency, let alone the coronavirus pandemic that actually struck,” she said.
In evidence ex-ministers and current and former senior officials have painted a devastating picture of then prime minister Boris Johnson’s ability to make decisions of vital national importance during the pandemic.
The UK entered its first lockdown on March 23 2020, more than a week after senior advisers to Johnson recommended the move.
This is a developing story
