If the UK government had not delayed announcing the latest quarantine, 27,000 people would be alive now
As News Front reported earlier, the United Kingdom has become one of the countries most affected by the pandemic. The reason for this is the belated and incompetent reaction of the authorities to the spread of the deadly virus. Dozens of families who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 are ready to take legal action against the government as officials refuse to investigate the events of the past year full of flawed decisions.
One such mistake was the postponement of the latest lockdown until January 2021. Authorities have delayed the quarantine despite a surge in COVID-infected people before Catholic Christmas. According to the Resolution Foundation think tank, the country would have avoided 27,000 deaths if the restrictions had been imposed in time.
Analysts praised the pace of vaccination and the programme of financial support for citizens and businesses. However, officials made the same mistake 3 times, which each time resulted in unnecessary deaths.
Mike Brewer, chief economist at Resolution Foundation: “Indecision and slowness on the issue of restrictions has been a disaster that has provoked many thousands of avoidable deaths.”
The report’s authors recalled the events of last spring. When Italy announced a national quarantine on 9 March, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson delayed a similar move for another two weeks. In September, amid a new rise in infections, when government scientific advisers insisted on a lockdown, authorities delayed a decision for more than 5 weeks. The situation repeated itself during the winter.
“Despite still rising rates, a full return to national lockdown was not announced until 4 January, when we saw over 50,000 cases [of infection] a day across the UK”, – it said.