Coronavirus (COVID-19)—MPs publish report on lessons learned

Article summary

The House of Commons, Science and Technology Committee and Health and Social Care Committee have published their report: ‘Coronavirus: lessons learned to date’. The report examines the UK’s initial response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, providing 38 recommendations to the government and public bodies. The joint inquiry, launched in October 2020, examined six key areas of the response to the coronavirus pandemic: the country's preparedness for a pandemic; the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as border controls, social distancing and lockdowns to control the pandemic; the use of test, trace and isolate strategies; the impact of the pandemic on social care; the impact of the pandemic on specific communities; and the procurement and roll-out of coronavirus vaccines. It concluded that some initiatives were ‘examples of global best practice’, whereas others represented ‘mistakes’. Both must be considered to ‘ensure that during the remaining period of the pandemic and in any new emergency, the UK could perform better...