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Senior doctors, government scientific advisers and a former head of the civil service have spoken out in favor of a public inquiry into the UK’s handling of Covid-19, increasing pressure on Boris Johnson to finally initiate the process, as deaths from coronavirus in the UK rose to nearly 126,000.
Thousands of bereaved families, nurses and ethnic minority leaders also backed calls for an investigation of everything from lockdown tactics to testing and tracing after the UK’s handling of the pandemic resulted in the worst death toll. per capita of any of the world’s major economies.
Lord Kerslake, the head of public administration under David Cameron, and Professor John Edmunds, a top government scientific adviser on Covid, are among a dozen influential figures who have told The Guardian they support a public investigation. Kerslake said a public inquiry could save lives and it would be “criminal not to learn the lessons.”
“We cannot rule out the possibility that we will address this issue again,” he said, adding that the investigation should begin in the summer.
Edmunds said: “An event of this magnitude must be analyzed in detail, including, if necessary, convincing witnesses to attend.”
With infections now at their lowest rate since September and close to 25 million people vaccinated with a first dose, others calling for the investigation to be triggered include Professor Dame Donna Kinnair, Secretary General of the Royal College of Nursing, Zara Mohammed , the general secretary of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the board of the British Medical Association, and Diane Mayhew, co-founder of the Rights for Residents group, which campaigns on behalf of nursing home residents, some of whom 40,000 died with Covid.
But despite the prime minister’s promise last July to establish an “independent investigation,” Downing Street is refusing to initiate the process that many consider essential to learn lessons for future pandemics.
“We are focused on protecting the NHS and saving lives and now is not the right time to devote a large amount of official time to an investigation,” said a government spokesman. “There will be an appropriate time in the future to look back, analyze and reflect on all aspects of this global pandemic.”
Other prominent scientists calling for research are Professor Sir Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute and a Nobel laureate.
Professor Andrew Hayward, an expert in infectious disease epidemiology who is also part of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said in a personal capacity: “Many would say that much of this could have been avoided if there had been [or] previous decisions had been made at various points in the pandemic. So these decision-making processes need to be analyzed and I think they are only likely to be fully clarified if people are forced to give evidence. “
He said the emphasis should be on “learning for the future rather than guilt.”
The mounting pressure on Johnson comes amid calls from more than 2,800 families bereaved by Covid for an “urgent” statutory investigation with the power to demand that witnesses present evidence and uncover documents.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group threatens to take legal action to force ministers to initiate an investigation, arguing that an unprepared government “did not serially take reasonable steps to minimize the effects of the pandemic, resulting in the loss. massive and unnecessary lives ”.
“It’s not just us grieving families, there are millions of people across the country who want answers,” said Jo Goodman, the group’s co-founder. “Did the prime minister do everything he could to prevent it? Could your government have been better prepared or did it ignore the warnings? Were decisions made that cost lives instead of saving them? An urgent statutory public inquiry is essential if we are to learn lessons and save lives now and in the future. “
Some high-ranking conservatives have already indicated that they want a public investigation and former Prime Minister David Cameron said earlier this month that he expected an investigation and that “more should have been learned from the experience with SARS and respiratory diseases in terms of our own preparation. ” The Commons select committee on constitutional affairs, chaired by Conservative MP William Wragg, called for an investigation last summer.
Christinea McAnea, secretary general of Unison, which represents 1.3 million health personnel, including porters, cleaners, sanitation workers and nurses, said an independent public inquiry led by judges should begin as soon as the society reopens. , currently scheduled for June 21.
“For the UK to recover, people have to understand why things went so disastrously wrong,” he said. “There are key questions to answer about why nursing homes were so vulnerable, front-line staff had no safety equipment, and testing was abandoned in the early stages.”
The two largest membership groups of doctors and nurses, the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Royal College of Nursing, also backed the calls.
“We have seen suffering at levels that people have not experienced,” said BMA’s Nagpaul. “We have seen the loss of livelihoods and the worsening of inequalities to levels that have devastated communities. Putting all that together, of course, calls for an investigation. “
Kinnair said that nurses were still experiencing a lack of PPE and that “a full investigation into the preparation and management of Covid-19 is the only way the government, its agencies and advisers … will really reflect and learn.”
Professor Andrew Goddard, President of the Royal College of Physicians, said he awaited investigation and should “identify and recommend changes so that we can improve future crisis preparedness and management … [It should] look at how prepared we were and the decisions we made in terms of very practical things like PPE stock, the size of the NHS workforce and how many critical care beds we have … [as well as] the biggest impact of Covid-19 in the UK due to public health status. “
Lord Simon Woolley, who until last summer was chairman of the government’s racial disparity unit advisory group, said he wanted a public inquiry to go beyond scientific and medical factors to include housing, healthcare, education and employment.
“For ethnic minority, Asian and black communities [Covid] It has been completely devastating, ”he said, adding that if an investigation followed the disease, it would expose social failures.
“This research is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dramatically change infrastructure,” he said. “Are we going to put a cast on an open wound or are we going to have an infrastructure change that contributes to a more just society?”
