July 15, 2020

expert reaction to Boris Johnson saying there will be an independent inquiry in future into the COVID-19 pandemic

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said today during Prime Minister’s Questions that there will be a future independent inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prof Rowland Kao, Sir Timothy O’Shea Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Data Science, University of Edinburgh, said:

“The announcement today of an independent inquiry into the response to the COVID-19 pandemic is very welcome.  It should be recognised that decisions made in an emergency situation, especially when the evidence is scant will often have less than optimal outcomes.  Therefore any inquiry should quickly move beyond criticism of the outcome of decisions that have made best use of the evidence available at the time, irrespective of the outcome.  What is more important is that an inquiry look into how the evidence itself was evaluated, with the aim of improving that use in the future.  In order to have real benefit, such an inquiry should be sufficiently timely to allow its recommendations to have an impact on our approaches to fighting both future waves of COVID-19 as well as future pandemics due to other pathogens.  As such, it should come soon and be broad in scope.”

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