Government failures in early pandemic response cost 23,000 lives, inquiry finds

Credit: PA Wire/Evening Standard/Jeremy Selwyn

By Claudia Tanner

A week's delay in imposing the first national lockdown cost approximately 23,000 lives in England, according to the official COVID-19 inquiry's damning assessment of the government's pandemic response.

Baroness Heather Hallett's report found that had lockdown been introduced on 16 March 2020 rather than 23 March, deaths in the first wave through to July would have been cut by 48%.