COVID-19 inquiry in UK asks whether 'terrible consequences' could have been avoided or reduced
A mammoth three-year public inquiry into Britain’s handling of COVID-19 has opened LONDON -- A mammoth three-year public inquiry into the U.K. government's handling of the response to COVID-19 opened Tuesday by asking if some suffering and death could have been avoided with better planning — and whether Britain's complex, protracted exit from the European Union distracted authorities from preparing for potential threats. Lawyer Hugo Keith, who is counsel to the inquiry, said the coronavirus pandemic had brought “death and illness on an unprecedented scale” in modern Britain. He said that COVID-19 had been recorded as a cause of death for 226,977 people in the U.K. “The key issue is whether that impact was inevitable,” Keith said. “Were those terrible consequences inexorable, or were they avoidable or capable of mitigation?” A group of people who lost relatives to COVID-19 held pictures of their loved one outside the inquiry venue, an anonymous London office building. The fir...