Why did the UK’s coronavirus response go so wrong?

The cost of Covid-19 in the UK, in 45,000 lives lost and considerably more if ‘excess’ deaths are included, in long term illness for tens of thousands, and in damage to our prosperity, is changing everything.

But did the shock have to be so great? Could the government have done more to protect us?

Among the questions that will be examined by Boris Johnson’s promised public inquiry is why vulnerable residents in care homes were put at serious risk, why health care workers struggled for months to obtain vital protective equipment, whether travellers from the viral hotspots of Italy, Spain and France should have been quarantined, whether the full lockdown could and should have been implemented a week or more earlier, and why the UK did not increase virus testing capacity much earlier.

There is one question that overarches all the rest, and it is why ministers and officials allowed the risk to build and build and build, during February and early March.