A public inquiry released Thursday slammed the U.K.'s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic in the early months of 2020 as “too little, too late,” saying the failure to lock down the country earlier “led to an unacceptable loss of life.”
The inquiry, chaired by former judge Heather Hallett, found that chaos at the heart of the then Conservative government and a failure to take COVID-19 seriously potentially cost 23,000 lives in England alone the first wave of the pandemic.
