Covid news - live: Starmer says PM should apologise over ‘damning’ report on handling of pandemic

Follow the latest updates

UK 'waited too long' to impose COVID-19 lockdown, costing thousands of lives: report

Sir Keir Starmer has called on Boris Johnson to apologise to bereaved families after a critical report on the government’s Covid response was released.

The Labour leader said the report was a “damning indictment” of the Government and thinks that the public Covid inquiry should begin earlier than the planned date of Spring 2022.

The report said mistakes at the start of the Covid pandemic cost lives and the government’s initial policy “one of the most important public health failures” ever in the UK.

The joint inquiry by the Science and Technology Committee and the  Health and Social Care Committee said the UK’s preparation for a pandemic was far too focused on flu and ministers waited too long to push through lockdown measures in early 2020.

Stephen Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, refused to apologise and insisted the government “did take decisions to move quickly” in the wake of the report’s publication.

Key Points

• Initial response to Covid cost thousands of lives, report finds
• Minister refuses to apologise for failings that ‘cost thousands of lives'
• ‘We know the service was initially ill-prepared for a pandemic’ - NHS Providers
• ‘We have a joke PM’: Cummings renews attack on Johnson over Covid response
• Starmer calls for PM to bring forward Covid public inquiry

[12 October 2021 11:00 · Zoe Tidman]

Key findings from report

The UK has been reacting to a new report this morning that criticised the government for it response to the Covid pandemic.

Here is a quick look at some of its key findings:

• Government experts were fixated on influenza prior to 2020 and did not see coronaviruses as a threat to the UK
• The government initially adopted a “deliberate policy” that “amounted in practice” to seeking herd immunity. The decision to manage, rather than suppress, infections proved fatal for tens of thousands
• The abandonment of community testing on 12 March was a “seminal failure” and “cost many lives”
• NHS Test and Trace has “failed to make a significant enough impact on the course of the pandemic to justify the level of public investment it received”
• Social care has been overlooked by the government throughout the pandemic, while minority ethnic communities experienced higher levels of death in its early phase.

To find out more about what the wide-reaching report found, read this by our science correspondent Sam Lovett:

[12 October 2021 11:11 · Zoe Tidman]

Report’s findings on care homes

May Bulman, our social affairs correspondent, has also taken a look at the inquiry’s findings on care homes.

The report said the number of Covid deaths in UK care homes was among the highest in Europe, which could have been avoided if they had not been mistakenly treated as an “afterthought”.

Read in full here:

[12 October 2021 11:23 · Zoe Tidman]

‘We know the service was initially ill-prepared for a pandemic’

Saffron Cordrey from NHS Providers said there was “much to learn” from the nation’s response to the Covid pandemic.

“While there is much the NHS did well during the pandemic, we know the service was initially ill-prepared for a pandemic, and there were areas, such as access to PPE and testing, where trusts did not get the support they needed from central government quickly enough,” she said.

“A lack of coherent national policy making to protect social care and care homes, the speed with which social distancing measures were adopted and later lifted by government, and the performance of the Test and Trace system, have all understandably come under criticism.”

She added: “The consequences of those decisions have left a devastating legacy: over 150,000 deaths linked to Covid-19 across the UK with a tragic and disproportionate impact on health and care staff from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the exposure of deep social, economic and health inequalities for Black, Asian and minority communities, which will take years to address.“

She said the public inquiry into Covid had to explore whether the country could have been better prepared and whether the government made decisions at the right time.

[12 October 2021 11:34 · Zoe Tidman]

‘Unacceptably high’ death rates in Bame communities

Nadine White, our race correspondent, has reported on its findings on the impact on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

The inquiry slammed “unacceptably high” death rates among people from Bame communities that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Read more here:

[12 October 2021 11:44 · Zoe Tidman]

‘This cold, hard look at what happened is very useful’

Dr David Nabarro, the World Health Organisation (WHO) special envoy for Covid-19, said the report on lessons learned in the UK during the early phase of the pandemic would help the government plan for “future problems” caused by Covid-19.

He told Sky News: “So for us at the World Health Organisation, this kind of really cold, hard look at what happened is very useful.

“We don’t think it’s relevant to apportion blame at this stage, we do think it’s right to learn.”

He added: “I think that if I had my way, every country would do this kind of analysis and would then have quite a dense learning moment so that the lessons can be applied.”

PA

[12 October 2021 12:05 · Zoe Tidman]

‘Stark and largely damning appraisal'

“The joint report issued today is a stark and largely damning appraisal of the UK’s Covid response,” virologist Stephen Griffin writes in The Independent.

He says: “While it avoids directly apportioning blame, this document will doubtless inform the long-awaited public inquiry.”

Read what he has to say about the report here:

[12 October 2021 12:17 · Joe Middleton]

Dominic Cummings: We have a joke Prime Minister and we need a new political system

Speaking on Tuesday, Boris Johnson’s former top aide told Sky News: “The government system for dealing with crises is a disaster, as I wrote in 2019.”

He added: “The system was bad for many years before Covid. Me and others put into place work to try and improve the system in 2020 after the first wave, unfortunately the Prime Minister - being the joke that he is - has not pushed that work through.

“Now we have a joke Prime Minister and a joke leader of the Labour Party and we obviously need a new political system.”

[12 October 2021 12:30 · Zoe Tidman]

Watch: Minister refuses to apologise

Stephen Barclay, the Cabinet Office minister, repeatedly refused to apologise this morning in light of the report’s findings.

Watch on Independent TV:

[12 October 2021 12:37 · Joe Middleton]

Covid deaths in England and Wales drop by 12%

The number of deaths involving coronavirus registered each week in England and Wales has dropped by 12%.

A total of 783 deaths registered in the week ending October 1 mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is down from 888 deaths registered in the previous week.

The drop of 12% is the largest week-on-week percentage decrease since a 14% fall in the week to June 11, when the number of deaths dropped from 98 to 84.

Since mid-June the number of deaths registered each week has followed a broadly upwards trend, reflecting the impact of the third wave of Covid-19.

The latest figures suggest this trend may have come to a halt.

It is too soon to know whether it is the start of a clear downwards path, however.

Deaths during the third wave of the virus have never reached the levels seen at the peak of the second wave.

[12 October 2021 12:45 · Joe Middleton]

Politicians seem to have forgotten all about the pandemic – wearing masks just looks like virtue signalling

All attendees of the Labour conference were told beforehand that masks were expected to be worn around the centre, and the request was politely ignored across the board, writes Marie Le Conte.