Emboldened by the improvement in the data, Boris Johnson announced this Wednesday morning that he will submit his government's management of the pandemic to the scrutiny of an independent investigation starting in the spring of next year.. With one of the lowest infection rates in Europe, the number of daily deaths from coronavirus, with the most favorable numbers since July of last year, and the most robust vaccination program on the continent, the prime minister knows that, probably, this Now is the best time to assess how the country has dealt with “the most significant pandemic the world has seen in the last century.”

In this way Johnson, who also has to face the fact that the United Kingdom is the country with the most deaths in Europe due to the health crisis, has promised that he will put “under the microscope all the decisions that have been made by the Government ” and that, in addition, they owe “the country the answers in a reasonable period of time”. The reasons that have led him to choose the spring of next year are, according to him, that he does not want the country's health experts to be burdened with even more work during the rest of 2021, placing the investigation, yes, close enough to so that those who still criticize his handling of the pandemic cannot accuse him of avoiding public scrutiny.

However, the 'premier', who had a term until the end of his legislature, has not committed to a judge directing the process, so it is still not clear what profile the person who must assess all the decisions that the Government has taken during two years of management and fight against the coronavirus. That is why the conservative leader, who will only have the power to set the framework of the investigation and appoint its president, has assured this week that the requirement is that he “have the necessary experience”, that he does not have a “direct interest” in matter and “is not associated in any way with any political party.”

Even so, Johnson has recognized that “the State has the obligation to analyze all its decisions in the most rigorous way possible to learn all the necessary lessons for the future”. That is why the investigation, and the process that accompanies it, will have “all the powers granted by law, including the ability to produce all the necessary documents and also to take public testimony under oath”, so all the actors who considered relevant will testify, including, surely, Johnson himself.

Optimism for the summer

The success of the vaccination campaign in the United Kingdom has led to the fact that not even the progressive steps of deconfinement taken in recent months are destabilizing the epidemiological situation in the country. That is why scientific experts are being, for the first time, optimistic about the outlook for the country during the summer, since the predictions do not include a significant rise in cases or deaths in the coming months.

This is not the case, however, with next winter, since the prime minister, who has already learned his lesson when it comes to underestimating the pandemic, has lowered his spirits, assuring that “it is very likely that there will be a rebound during the winter” , so the country cannot lose sight of variants of the virus as “worrying” as the one that originated in India.