Is Boris Johnson learning from his coronavirus mistakes?

Boris Johnson insists that Downing Street is learning lessons from the UK and around the world as it adapts its response to the coronavirus crisis. However, in the absence of an inquiry into the initial handling of the pandemic, critics warn that there is little independent oversight of the government.

Some scientists believe that imposing the lockdown one week earlier could have halved the UK’s death toll, which is the highest in Europe. The initial response to the outbreak was hampered by a shortage of ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE). A lack of testing capacity led to contact tracing being abandoned in March. With hindsight, the government’s scientific and medical advisers accept that it should have continued.

Another failure was in protecting care homes. Despite ministers’ claims to have put a “protective ring” around them “at the start”, it happened only after painful lessons had been learnt. A tragedy unfolded as homes struggled to cope with patients discharged from hospitals, and without adequate PPE or testing for staff and residents.

The provision of ventilators and PPE has improved. Long-term contracts should prevent a repeat of the problems in securing them. A 14-day quarantine for people arriving in the UK was widely seen as too late when it was finally imposed in June.

The government is still running to catch up on contact tracing, seen as a vital tool for combating local flare-ups and the second wave that ministers fear will accompany the cold weather this winter.

Lessons also need to be learnt from the first city-wide lockdown in Leicester. The government has been accused of not sharing enough data with local authorities and public health officials, when there could have been a swifter tightening of restrictions in Leicester if they had known the scale of the outbreak. On Wednesday, Public Health England agreed to provide councils with more information from testing.

At his weekly joust with Johnson at prime minister’s questions, Keir Starmer tied all the failures together into a dangerous narrative: the government has been “slow” at every turn. Senior Tories fear privately that this will become a central theme of the public inquiry that Johnson cannot delay forever.

The investigation might conclude they the government did learn from its mistakes during an unprecedented crisis – but that this, too, was done too slowly.