The COVID-19 inquiry: learning the lessons
Our view on the situation facing the NHS when the pandemic began, how events unfurled and core considerations for the COVID-19 inquiry.
Download the report $The COVID 19 Inquiry Learning The Lessons 128.1 kBKey points
- Throughout the pandemic, leaders from across the health and care system delivered successful changes that made the pandemic response and recovery possible, including delivering a world-class vaccination campaign, providing digital care and remote monitoring of patients, rapidly putting in place thousands of extra intensive care unit beds and contributing to the wider economic and social response and recovery.
- In the face of some of the biggest challenges they have ever faced, NHS leaders are doing their best to learn and scale lessons to not only recover direct, easily measurable impacts of the pandemic, such as elective backlogs, but to fundamentally improve the health of the nation. This includes improving population health outcomes, reducing inequity and continuing to find new ways to increase access to more preventative care in an inclusive and more sustainable way.
- However, the NHS went into the pandemic with huge unaddressed workforce shortages, high bed occupancy, systemic inequalities in health outcomes and underfunding of health and social care as well as wider public services, meaning the health system was underprepared when the pandemic hit in March 2020. The COVID-19 inquiry must consider the medium-term impact of austerity and the long-term failure to address the social determinants of health.
- Moreover, the health and social care response was greatly hindered by a challenging operating environment, characterised by a lack of national preparedness and unclear decision-making, which often came too late and was communicated poorly. The UK lacked the requisite testing and diagnostic capacity in contrast to our counterparts such as Germany. Instead, the NHS had to establish sites, set up systems or procure capacity from scratch when the crisis hit. In addition, PPE was frequently not fit for purpose in terms of quantity or type.
- A lack of candour about these and other key elements of the response provided the workforce with false assurances. The COVID-19 inquiry should focus on the impact of decisions made at the highest level, by those who set the strategy and guidance.
- Learning lessons from the pandemic will not wait for the inquiry to conclude. Staff across the health and care system are working hard to now modernise and scale up so that the system is ready for potential new COVID-19 variants, future pandemics and the impact of the climate crisis. We have highlighted some learnings from the pandemic which we believe should be reflected in the NHS Long Term Plan refresh. However, we hope the findings of the statutory inquiry will bolster these efforts. A wealth of innovation and best practice has been shared throughout the system that the COVID-19 inquiry team should look at in their assessment of lessons learned.