good afternoon. one of the most important public health failures in uk history that s the damining verdict from mps today on the government s early handling of the pandemic. a joint report by two parliamentary committees says both ministers and scientists waited too long to lock down last year, costing many lives. and it concludes that there were thousands of avoidable deaths in care homes. the report calls the test, trace and isolate system slow, uncertain, and often chaotic , but there is praise for the vaccine roll out. our health correspondent jim reed reports. it is completely unimaginable, and we are not at the peak yet. in the spring of 2020 the government was, says this report, working in a fog of uncertainty. i m shaking hands. i was in a hospital the other night where i think there were a few
solidified in this report, that that was what was happening. social care was very much an afterthought. the report, though, does also praise parts of the national response. the vaccine programme was picked out as a success, as were new treatments like dexamethasone, first developed for covid use in this country. the government says it has not shied away from taking quick actions when needed. we followed the scientific advice throughout, we protected the nhs from the surge of pressure that we saw in other countries such as italy. as you say, we got the vaccine deployed extremely quickly. but also, what we know about the pandemic now is very different to what the level of knowledge was at the start. labour, though, said the report showed monumental errors had been made. this was one of the worst public health failures in the uk. that is a damning indictment. and my thoughts are with the families who have lost people
hello, here are a look at our headlines. the headlines on bbc news. a damning report from mps who call the government s early handling of the pandemic one of the worst public health failures in uk history, costing thousands of lives. early decisions, in particular how a slowness to lockdown, did have consequences and we have got to confront the lessons from that. the report criticised the chaotic system of test and trace and moving infected patients into care homes. families of the victims say people died unnecessarily. i think she lost her life because of mistakes that were made by the government. and i want to know about that, i want to hear about it in a fulljudicial inquiry. the brexit minister, lord frost says post brexit trade arrangements, which the uk negotiated with the eu,
government figures this report doesn t name names but it is striking to see the catalogue of errors and indeed successes that have happened over the past 18 months or so laid bare. and the fact that that you ve got to form a conservative cabinet ministers, the two committee chairs and volunteer who put their names to this report is also quite something, i think. that central conclusion that the government was too slow to lockdown early on in the pandemic, that lives were lost as a result is definitely damaging. as all the various other things that it talks about. the test and trace programme, the problems with that. the problems in terms of border controls, racial disparity, regional tier system there is an awful lot of detail in there. i think ministers will be quite confident that it doesn t give the political opponents too much fresh ammunition was up but they will perhaps be worried by the response