On 16 April 2026, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, led by Baroness Hallett, published its Module 4 report, examining the development and rollout of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics. This inquiry, which the government originally resisted commissioning, is not binding on this or any other government. It was delayed and strung out over many years to help dissipate anger over the British state’s atrocious response to the pandemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic was caused by the emergence in November-December 2019 of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19 disease. This led to the deaths of over 232,000 people in Britain and the north of Ireland. By April 2024 about two million people in England and Scotland were still suffering from post-covid (Long Covid) symptoms. Britain’s handling of the pandemic was shambolic and criminal, hampered by an inept and venal Tory government, whose priority throughout was to protect capitalist profits, and the wealth and privileges of the elites over working class lives. At no point were the Tories challenged by Labour under either Corbyn or Starmer. Consequently, Britain remains structurally totally unprepared for the next pandemic, and the ruling class has used the Covid-19 inquiry as a way of covering up its crimes to kicking these issues into the long grass.
Modules 1-4
The Inquiry is split into 10 modules in total, with further reports due into 2027, following Module 1 (July 2024), Module 2 (November 2025) and Module 3 reports (March 2026). Module 4 also considered vaccine safety, and unequal vaccine uptake. The inquiry has found that Britain was unprepared for the Covid-19 pandemic. Britain’s healthcare systems were ‘in a parlous state, with severe workforce shortages, an ageing hospital estate, low numbers of hospital beds and high bed occupancy rates.’ This was due to decades of austerity measures and public sector cuts implemented by Labour, LibDem and Tory governments. Britain’s 2011 pandemic plans were outdated, planned for an influenza pandemic, ignored asymptomatic transmission, made no preparation for a testing and contact tracing system, focused on managing spread of a pathogen rather than preventing transmission through the population. Assessments of risks facing the country were strategically and fatally flawed, and ignored pre-existing health and societal inequalities and deprivation in society. The inquiry recommends a ‘UK-wide pandemic response exercise at least every three years.’ This has still not been implemented four years after public health measures (‘restrictions’) were lifted in May 2022.
The module 2 report, which looked at decision-making and political response to the pandemic, tries to excuse the government’s criminal lack of urgency as ‘[having] to make decisions in conditions of extreme pressure and initially without access to data’, still concluded that Britain’s response was ‘too little too late’, that February 2020 was a ‘lost month’, and that there was a serious lack of urgency even after the scale of calamity facing Britain was obvious. For example, no cabinet meetings were held between 14-25 February 2020, during which then prime minister Boris Johnson was on holiday. The inquiry, whilst not advocating for lockdowns recognised that timely decisions taken earlier could ‘conceivably have made lockdowns not necessary at all’. It confirms that had the government locked down a week earlier than 23 March 2020, there would have been 23,000 fewer deaths. Furthermore, had a circuit breaker lockdown been imposed in September 2020, the 5 November 2020 lockdown might have ‘been avoided altogether’.
This is not a case of hindsight. Professor John Edmunds, chief scientific adviser at the foreign office, who served on the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, said ‘we let the second wave happen’; whilst Professor Angela McLean, current chief scientific adviser said ‘we could see what was coming and could not understand why the government did not act upon the science advise by introducing effective interventions’. They did not act because their priority was protecting the capitalist economy. The first two waves between March 2020 and May 2021 saw 140,000 Covid-related deaths in England and Wales (with Covid-19 as a cause of death on the death certificate), meaning that the UK had one of the highest death rates per capita in the world. Most of the deaths were in vulnerable groups, including disabled people and ethnic minorities.
Module 4 report celebrates the success of the vaccination campaign. By June 2022, approximately 87% of the UK population aged over 12 years had been vaccinated with two doses – the largest vaccination programme in British history. By 2026, at least 53.7 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine (92% of the population aged over 12).
This success however, is being used to gloss over the inequalities in vaccine uptake: Module 4 report found that vaccine uptake was lower in communities with greater levels of deprivation and some ethnic minority groups, which were ‘predictable disparities’ reflecting an underlying lack of access and lack of trust in health authorities. This left some communities more susceptible to false information about the Covid vaccines. What the report does not say is that the British and US governments were the chief purveyors of false vaccine information: they pushed pseudoscience such as a ‘let it rip’ strategy to achieve ‘herd immunity’, rubbished the use of masks, refused to vaccinate children under 12 years old, and peddled negative propaganda against Chinese, Russian and Cuban Covid-19 vaccines.
Module 4 report also found that the current Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, which compensates members of the public damaged by the vaccine, is ‘not sufficiently supportive’ and recommended that maximum payouts be increased from the current upper limit of £120,000 to at least £200,000. It has been shown that deaths from Covid-19 are 32 times higher in unvaccinated people than in people who had received two doses, hence the risks of not taking the vaccine far outweigh the risks of taking it, not to mention the risks of Long Covid, and cardiovascular and brain damage, and diabetes, kidney failure, lung scarring, mental health risks, vascular ageing and other risks associated with even a ‘mild’ Covid-19 infection. The successful development of vaccines cannot be used to hide wider failures in preparedness.
The next pandemic
Most scientists agree that it’s a question of when, not if, the next pandemic will occur. A December 2025 report by Ashley Quigley and Raina MacIntyre in BMC Infectious Disease has analysed over 200 human viral pathogens that were reported from 1900 to 2024, and found the peak of viral emergence between 1950-1979 (87 emergences) and from 2000 onwards, with 52 viral emergences. Most of these viral outbreaks were facilitated by animal-to-human contact (zoonotic spillover). Viral outbreaks such as the Covid-19 pandemic are not rare occurrences, but ongoing processes driven by capitalist deforestation, urbanisation, agricultural intensification and monoculture, wildlife trade, global travel and climate change which has created new conditions for pathogens to emerge or reemerge in expanding geographical areas. Peter Daszak, president of Ecohealth Alliance, has reported there are hotspots for bat-to-human spillover of SARs-type coronaviruses ‘in a large geographic area in southern China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and further potential for viral emergence across the whole region’. Studies published in February 2022, show that there were at least two separate cross-species transmission events into humans in November – December 2019 and that there were likely multiple zoonotic spillover events that led to the emergence of Covid-19. This highlights a substantial and ongoing public health risk.
Vaccination gaps
The British government’s response to the March 2026 outbreak of meningitis B in Kent shows that its public health response remains reactive, with deep structural flaws. Following the outbreak, vaccination was initiated, antibiotics distributed and contact tracing triggered in a rapid response. 21 people were infected, all needing hospitalisation, and two people died. Another 3 cases of MenB emerged in April 2026 in Weymouth, and 4 more cases (and one death) in Reading – both outbreaks not linked to the Kent outbreak. The UK Health Security Agency described the outbreak as ‘unprecedented’. Yet there have been major ongoing outbreaks of meningococcal disease in Europe and the US since 2021. Young people and adolescents are the most affected groups.
Britain’s Men B vaccine Bexsero, was introduced in 2015. Hence young people over the age of 11 are unvaccinated and haven’t been offered vaccination since it was launched. This patchwork immunity has allowed the reemergence of meningococcal disease. The British government is now ‘reviewing eligibility for meningitis vaccines’ but it is once again reactive to outbreaks that are neither random nor unexpected. One major consideration will be the cost of the vaccine Bexsero manufactured by GSK (£75 per dose on the NHS; up to £200 privately). The British government has illegally implemented the US blockade of socialist Cuba and refused to purchase the Cuban MenB vaccine, VA-MengocBC, available since 1989 (£11 per dose). Cuba’s population has almost 100% coverage of MenB and MenC vaccination, using the first MenB vaccine in the world. This shows the pernicious effects of the US extraterritorial blockade of Cuba, and of putting the profit considerations of pharmaceutical companies like GSK ahead of people’s health.
The British ruling class, with its absolute contempt for working class lives, refuses to learn the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic – only socialism can put health before capitalist profits.
