The number of deaths from coronavirus in York Teaching Hospital Trust since the start of the pandemic has risen to moreb than 500. The national death toll exceeds 100,000.

The government’s handling of this crisis has been lamentable, but the Prime Minister claims it has done ‘everything possible’. This is an astonishing failure.

We should remember:

  • the slow initial response, with full lockdown on March 23, seven weeks after the first cases (in York), and two weeks after the disease was ripping through Lombardy
  • acute shortages of PPE
  • issue of contracts to friends of the government for PPE and testing
  • abject failure of ‘world beating’ test, track, and trace
  • Johnson’s Spring promises to ‘send the virus packing’
  • the release of patients from hospitals into care homes without adequate testing, unleashing a spiralling death toll
  • the ludicrous ‘eat out to help out’ campaign
  • failure to follow scientific advice to lock down in autumn
  • schools policy confusion
  • supporting ‘getting together for Christmas’ before slashing the time permitted, but still allowing travel
  • a subsequent explosion in cases and deaths
  • the PM now suggests, with no evidence, that schools will be opening normally in five weeks.

The success of the vaccination programme cannot compensate for this litany of failure.

The failure, however, is not merely recent. At the start of the pandemic, the UK had 2.5 hospital beds per 1,000 population compared with Germany’s eight and France’s 5.9. We have a similarly low number of doctors. Spending on health is one third that of Germany. After Covid-19, we need massive, sustained investment in the NHS.

Dr Simon Sweeney, York Management School, University of York