too little, too late.
All four governments failed to appreciate the scale of the threat or the urgency of response it demanded in the early part of 2020,
relying in part on misleading assurances that the UK was properly shared for a pandemic.
That was Baroness Hallett, the chair of the COVID inquiry,
delivering her verdict at the end of the second stage of that inquiry,
which is all about how the governments of the UK managed the COVID pandemic.
And kind of the short version of what she's said is that the government could have locked down earlier,
saving tens of thousands of lives or it could have introduced restrictions earlier and more decisively which could have prevented the lockdown in the first place.
There is a huge amount to digest and it will take us back to a very difficult time.
for all of us,
but we will dive into the findings of the Covid Inquiry and what it means for politics and how we handle crises in the future in this country in this latest episode of Newscast.
Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast Studio.
And because we're going to be talking about the latest stage of the COVID Enquirer,
we've reunited the duo who have taken us through the previous stages.
Here is our health reporter, Jim Reid.
Hello, Jim.
Hi, Adam.
And Catherine Hazin from the Institute for Government Think Tank.
Hello.
Hello, Adam.