COVID inquiry condemns response and says lockdowns could have been avoided

There were 23,000 people killed by Covid who could have been saved if lockdown had been imposed just one week earlier - but the national shutdown could have been avoided entirely with a quicker response, the official inquiry concludes today.The devastating national shutdown of March 2020 might have been avoided altogether if the four governments of the UK had acted sooner to grip the pandemic, it also found.Whitehall was so badly prepared for the devastating virus that ministers were forced to take 'tough decisions' which amounted to 'too little, too late', announced Baroness Hallett, chair of the Covid-19 Inquiry.