The UK's handling of the pandemic in its early stages was found to be "one of the worst public health failures" in the history of the country, in a report by a cross-party group of ministers published on Tuesday.

The 150-page study said the the UK government failed to learn lessons from east Asian countries like China and the Republic of Korea. It found the "fatalistic" approach of the politicians in power and scientists responsible for advising the government, which produced the shared belief that herd immunity would eventually be the best solution to curb infections, caused a higher death toll than would have been suffered if better, stricter measures had been taken in due time.  

Here are the report's key findings:

• With more than 150,000 COVID-19 deaths in the UK since March 2020, the country has reported one of the highest death tolls in Europe, which means Britain fared much worse than other European countries that moved faster to impose lockdowns.

• According to the study, "the UK's pandemic planning was too narrowly and inflexibly based on a flu model, which failed to learn the lessons from SARS, MERS and Ebola."

• A degree of "groupthink" shared by the government and advising scientists led to an initial strategy that was not aimed at stopping the spread of the virus among the population but simply "trying to manage it." The report says the UK government committed "a serious early error in adopting this fatalistic approach."

• Despite the UK "being one of the first countries in the world to develop a test for COVID-19 in January 2020," as the study reports, the NHS Test and Trace system was only established when daily infection rates were already up to 2,000 cases. "A country with a world-class expertise in data analysis should not have faced the biggest health crisis in a hundred years with virtually no data to analyze," the study concludes.

• The UK had "too little explicit learning from the international experience" of countries that were handling the pandemic better at the time, such as China and the Republic of Korea, and was "reactive" rather than "anticipatory" in its early response to the pandemic.

• People receiving care and their families, as well as staff employed in social care, suffered "devastating and preventable repercussions" from the government and the National Health Service's inability to recognize the risks posed to the sector by the pandemic, including staff shortages, lack of testing and lack of protective equipment.

• The report includes positive achievements, highlighting the later success of the country in fighting the pandemic, saying the early roll-out of vaccines was "one of the most effective initiatives in UK history."

UK pandemic response timeline

•  January 31, 2020: first two COVID-19 cases confirmed in the UK.

•  February 2-4, 2020: the UK government advises regular handwashing.

•  March 12, 2020: those who test positive are asked to self-isolate.

•  March 16, 2020: the government advises working from home and avoiding unnecessary travel.

•  March 20, 2020: indoor hospitality and schools are closed.

•  March 23, 2020: UK imposes a national lockdown.

•  May 28, 2020: England launches NHS Test and Trace.

•  November 5, 2020: England imposes a second four-week lockdown.

•  December 8, 2020: UK launches its vaccination program.

•  January 4, 2021: England orders a third lockdown.

•  July 19, 2021: England lifts all legal restrictions on "Freedom Day."

The East Asian example

China and the Republic of Korea are among the countries that first mobilized to contain the spread of the virus and which immediately benefited from the restrictions imposed.

ROK, which after the outbreak of MERS in 2015 was prepared to face an epidemic, imposed a mass test-and-trace program in January 2020. The country also isolated those infected and supported those in quarantine, boosting compliance.

After the first outbreak in Wuhan, China reacted quickly to the risk of the virus spreading out of control, with large-scale surveillance, including community-wide temperature screenings at bus and ferry stations, railways and airports, shops and workplaces, as well as the preparation of medical facilities and supplies.

High technology tracing was also used to identify those who have been in contact with a positive case and street cameras were installed to catch individuals failing to wear face masks.

The city of Wuhan and the entire Hubei province, where the busy city is located, were put under lockdown on January 24, 2020.

As a result of these massive efforts, China managed to contain new infections within its borders and a sharp drop in new cases within the country was recorded in February 2020 and it's still ongoing.

Thanks to this success, China was able to lift Wuhan's lockdown after two months and reopen its economy in April 2020 – much earlier than European countries.

What are the reactions to the report?

In the wake of the damning report, Conservative Party lawmakers have tried to defend the government's early response to the pandemic, with minister Stephen Barclay telling the BBC's Today program the pandemic  was "unprecedented" and forced the government to make "difficult judgments," though he said it always followed scientific advice.

Barclay also reiterated that, at the time, the common perception by ministers was that no member of the public was willing to endure a strict lockdown for an extended period of time.

Conservative MP Greg Clark told BBC Breakfast the UK was not the only country that made mistakes in the early stages of the pandemic, though he admitted there were lessons to learn from the failure to quickly mobilize testing efforts in early 2020.

Jeremy Hunt, another Conservative MP who was also health secretary from 2012 to 2018 and chairs the health and social care committee which co-wrote the report, told ITV's Good Morning Britain the UK should have imposed a national lockdown earlier and that "the prime minister is of course ultimately responsible, but some of the advice that he got was also wrong."

Hannah Brady of the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group said the report was "laughable" and "more interested in political arguments" than addressing the tragedy faced by the families who have lost loved ones to the virus.

World Health Organization special envoy for COVID-19 David Nabarro said the report was useful for the UK to learn lessons for future problems, but said he did not believe there was a point in assigning blame "at this stage."

As the report was released, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was on holiday in Spain.

An independent public inquiry into the government's early handling of the pandemic is due to begin next year.