The British government will launch a review into its handling of the coronavirus outbreak once the crisis has passed, Culture Minister Oliver Dowden said Monday.
His comments come in the wake of criticism that the British government could have responded more quickly to the outbreak and implemented measures to slow the spread of the virus earlier.
“When we’re dealing with an unprecedented crisis like this we’re not going to have perfect 20:20 hindsight vision on this,” Mr. Dowden told the BBC.
“Of course we will need to look back and see the things we could have done differently.”
Britain has one of the highest infection and death rates from the coronavirus, behind the U.S. and several other European nations. The U.K. has reported 121,174 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, 16,060 deaths and 444 recoveries, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. Britain has a population of 66 million.
Mr. Dowden explained that the government right now is expected to continue its efforts to mitigate the damage from the virus and will not be launching the review immediately.
“We have said that we will of course review all the lessons that we need to learn from this and indeed learn the lessons globally,” he said.
• Lauren Toms can be reached at lmeier@washingtontimes.com.
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