About Covid-19
Covid-19 is a virus. It can make people very ill. It suddenly appeared in the UK in 2020. It spread very quickly.
People across the world became ill. Many people died. This meant it was called a pandemic.
The 4 governments of the UK had to make big decisions about how to protect people:
- UK Government
- Welsh Government
- Scottish Government
- Northern Ireland Executive
The Covid-19 Inquiry
The Inquiry is finding out what happened during the pandemic.
This will help people to make better decisions in the future.
The Inquiry has hearings. At a hearing, we listen to people like politicians, doctors and scientists.
After the hearings, the Chair, Baroness Hallett, writes reports.
This Easy Read is about her report for Module 4.
About this report
This is an Easy Read version of the Covid-19 Inquiry’s 4th report.
The full report has a lot more information.
There are more versions in accessible formats.
You can get all the reports from the Covid-19 Inquiry website:
Module 4
Module 4 is about vaccines and therapeutics.
Vaccines
Covid-19 vaccines were given to people as an injection.
A vaccine teaches your body to recognise and fight a virus. This means you are less likely to get as ill.
Therapeutics
Therapeutics are drugs and medicines that helped many people to recover from Covid-19.
Vaccines, drugs and treatments in the pandemic
Vaccines
People started to get vaccines just under 1 year after the pandemic started.
1 vaccine was made in the UK.
We think that hundreds of thousands of peoples’ lives were saved by vaccines.
The UK approved vaccines quickly and was good at giving them out. Most people got at least 1 vaccination.
Drugs and medicines
The first drug was being used to help treat Covid-19 by June 2020.
This was just months after people first started getting ill.
This drug saved many people’s lives.
More drugs were developed very quickly.
Things that did not work well
Some groups of people were less likely to get the vaccine:
people who live in places where there is more deprivation.
Deprivation means not having the money, things, or opportunities you need to live a healthy and happy life.
- people from ethnic minority groups
An ethnic minority is a smaller group of people in society from a different race, culture, or identity.
Some people said things about vaccines on social media that were not true.
Vaccines played an important role in protecting many people. Less people had to go to hospital because of the vaccine.
There were rare cases of people becoming seriously unwell or dying after having the vaccine.
The UK was not ready to make new vaccines, drugs and medicines at the start of the pandemic. We did well to catch up.
We need to make sure we are ready next time.
What should happen next
These are things governments must do to protect people in the future.
1. Set up a panel of people who can give advice
The people on the panel should know a lot about making vaccines, drugs and medicines.
The panel should make sure that the UK can make and buy:
- vaccines
- drugs and treatments
2. Make plans to encourage people to take vaccines.
The plans should say:
- What action is going to be taken to encourage people to take vaccines.
- How these plans will be communicated to local communities.
3. Collect information about vaccinations
Collect information about vaccinations.
Understand how many people get vaccinated and why other people choose not to.
Use this information to encourage more people to get vaccinated.
4. Find out how safe new vaccines and drugs are
Improve how the safety of new vaccines is checked.
This should be done by regulators.
It is their job is to make sure that vaccines and drugs are safe.
Let the regulators see people’s health information. This will help them to do their job well.
5. Change the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme
The scheme gives money to people who have been hurt by vaccines.
The amount people get should be more. It should also be fairer.
What happens next
After every hearing Baroness Hallett writes her recommendations.
All these recommendations are designed to work well together.
She expects that all the recommendations will be done by the UK’s governments.
She will check to make sure this is happening.
Future reports
There will be more reports about:
- things that were bought – like medical equipment
- test, trace and isolate
- social care
- children and young people
- financial support given by the UK government
- how it affected the whole population
Find out more
If you want to find out more, please go to this website.
Thank you for reading our report.