The delay to England’s first coronavirus lockdown was a serious error based on groupthink that went unchallenged, lawmakers said in a report published on Tuesday, adding that failures in testing positive cases and tracing their contacts exacerbated the crisis. Parliament’s health and science committees have jointly published a 150-page report on lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic after hours of testimony from more than 50 witnesses, include government policy, health and science advisers. Deficiencies in the Covid-19 response in Britain have been laid out in a series of Reuters special reports, including about delays in the decision to lock down, shortcomings in the test and trace system and errors that lead to the spread of the pandemic in care homes. The lawmaker report highlighted concerns about all three, adding there was a “policy approach of fatalism” that sought to manage but not suppress Covid-19 infections in the early stages of the pandemic, which it described as a “serious error”.