Governments and the World Health Organization acted too slowly to stem coronavirus pandemic infections which led to millions of preventable deaths, according to a report in the Lancet medical journal.

Widespread failures in prevention, basic public health practice and international solidarity resulted in 17.7mn deaths, including those not officially counted, the Lancet Commission said on Wednesday after releasing its two-year study into the pandemic.

The report concluded that the WHO “acted too cautiously and too slowly on several important matters”, including on the human transmissibility of the virus and on giving the outbreak the highest international health emergency status. The WHO started calling the outbreak a “pandemic” in March of 2020 to raise awareness of the issue, about three months after the first recorded infection in China, though the term has no legal implication.