Covid inquiry finds UK led world on vaccines – however minority had been harmed

Covid-19 Inquiry finds over 450,000 lives were saved by Britain’s rapid vaccine rollout while NHS treatment breakthrough saved a million lives globally

View 4 Images

Britain’s pandemic vaccine rollout was an “extraordinary feat” but people harmed by jabs were let down, the Covid-19 Inquiry has found.

The biggest public inquiry in British history said 450,000 lives were saved in England alone after scientists and the NHS were able to develop and roll out a vaccine in record time. However a minority who were left disabled after experiencing rare side effects told the probe they felt “silenced, ignored or treated as vaccine deniers” and the report said government payouts to them should be increased.

The latest module of the Covid-19 inquiry looking at vaccines and treatments against the virus paints a picture of how scientists and medics were the real heroes of the pandemic.

READ MORE: Iran war live: Middle East breakthrough as Iran gives major Hormuz hint amid ‘historic talks’READ MORE: Moment Farage Reform heavies manhandle frail OAP in parking row

The NHS delivered the first ever approved Covid-19 vaccine while an NHS study identified the first drug to work against the virus, which then immediately became the standard treatment for people on ventilators and saved a million lives globally.

Inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett said: “When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK, the race was on to develop an effective vaccine and establish the most effective therapeutics programme to fight this new and deadly virus.

“The vaccination programme was an extraordinary feat. Effective vaccines were developed, produced and delivered to the majority of the population in record time.”

The top judge and crossbench peer added: “Tragically, a number of people suffered harm as a result of having a vaccine. This was a small minority compared to the overall scale of the vaccination programme, but of no less importance to the individuals affected and their families.”

Decades of research had gone into Britain’s pandemic response with scientists developing vaccine platforms which were repurposed for the new virus sweeping the globe.

The report told how this groundwork which would ordinarily take between 10 to 20 years allowed the UK to authorise and roll-out effective vaccines within a year of the first Covid-19 case.

The UK developed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and authorised two further jabs which one study estimated saved 450,000 lives in England alone.

Britain’s treatment breakthrough

In the early phases of the pandemic the seriously ill could only have their symptoms managed via respirators and organ support to help the body attempt to fight off the virus itself.

While other health systems were trying a range of drugs in a more haphazard way, the NHS quickly commissioned a pilot to the standard of a clinical trial to properly monitor which, if any, worked.

Within three months 10,000 intensive care patients were recruited to the RECOVERY trial which led to the crucial discovery in June 2020 that dexamethasone slashed the risk of death. It did this by tackling the deadly inflammation which the seriously ill were experiencing. By March 2021 dexamethasone had saved the lives of 22,000 Covid patients in the UK and a million globally.

RECOVERY eventually recruited around 50,000 patients at 177 NHS trusts and became the largest clinical trial in the world into Covid-19. It also revealed that a host of other drugs being used globally did not actually work. It was followed by more NHS-wide trials along the same principles.

Professor Sir Nicholas White, who was an expert witness to the inquiry, said the RECOVERY trial was “the single most important therapeutics research result of the pandemic”.

Vaccine harm

The inquiry also stated that “any vaccine carries with it a risk for a small minority of people” and told how some people were left disabled and even died as a result of a reaction to a jab. The report found that a government compensation scheme of a fixed payment of £120,000 for those left disabled by a jab was insufficient for those who suffered serious harm.

Baroness Hallett said this should be increased to a maximum of £200,000 for the most serious disability. She said: “In the context of a whole-population vaccination programme, when governments ask people to be vaccinated in part to protect others, there must be appropriate financial support for those rare cases of people suffering side effects.”

The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme has been criticised for requiring claimants to have been left “at least 60% disabled” as a result of a vaccination. This led to hundreds of claims being rejected even though it was accepted the vaccines caused them harm. The report said 17,519 people had applied to the scheme as of January 2025. Almost 8,000 applicants had not received a decision.

Some 227,000 Brits died from Covid-19 between March 2020 and May 2023, when the World Health Organisation said the “global health emergency” was over. The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has cost around £300 million and is aimed at providing a blueprint for future governments to prepare for the next pandemic. The 275-page report on vaccines and therapeutics is four of ten set to be published.

In her foreword, Baroness Hallett concluded: “For the vast majority of the UK, the vaccines protected people against the most serious effects of Covid-19 and saved lives. They also played an important role in reducing the spread of the virus.

“They reduced the number of people who required hospitalisation or intensive care, thereby taking pressure off the healthcare systems of the four nations. Over time, this helped to reduce the need for lockdown restrictions and to ease some of the damaging effects of the pandemic on society.”

The report found that lack of confidence in Covid-19 vaccines was a global issue driven by online disinformation and made worse by the fact that they were new and developed so quickly. It said lack of trust in governments and health authorities in some communities made them more susceptible to false information about jabs.

Despite the success of vaccines during the pandemic the report states that public trust in vaccines needs to be rebuilt. It says global vaccine hesitancy is being driven by the spread of false information online – but acknowledged a small minority were seriously harmed by jabs.

Baroness Hallett said: “Action is needed in all four nations to build trust within communities with lower vaccine uptake and to make vaccines more accessible to them, before the next pandemic hits.”

The report also found that the UK entered the pandemic without sufficient manufacturing capability and said this must be addressed.

Five Key Recommendations

Establishing a pharmaceutical expert advisory panel. The panel should oversee the UK’s preparedness to develop, procure and manufacture vaccines and therapeutics;

Producing targeted vaccination strategies and communications. This should include consulting with local networks about campaign and delivery approaches, in order to increase vaccine uptake and reduce inequalities;

Improving monitoring and evaluation of vaccine uptake and delivery. This would help in understanding the measures proven to be effective in increasing vaccine uptake;

Facilitating regulatory bodies’ access to healthcare records. This is for the purposes of post-authorisation safety monitoring of new vaccines and therapeutics;

Reforming the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme. This must take place as soon as possible, with an increase in the minimum payment awarded to those injured by a vaccine and a fairer system for determining payment.