UK’s COVID lockdown delay caused 23,000 excess deaths, inquiry concludes

London, Nov 20 (PTI) The UK's government-level response to the COVID pandemic was often a case of "too little, too late", and a week's delay in imposing a mandatory lockdown during the first wave in 2020 led to approximately 23,000 excess deaths, an official inquiry concluded in London on Thursday. The report entitled ‘Core UK decision-making and political governance’ marks the second module of a phased probe into the UK’s response to the coronavirus pandemic being led by Baroness Heather Hallett. The UK officially recorded more than 235,000 deaths involving COVID-19 up to the end of 2023, and the latest report finds that this figure could have been lower if all four devolved governments of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern England had not “failed to appreciate the scale of the thre