Update: Inquiry opens 2025 with Module 4 hearings, confirms dates for Module 9 ‘Economic response’ hearings and Module 2 report publication schedule

The Covid Inquiry UK is divided into different investigations – or ‘Modules’ – which will examine different parts of the UK’s preparedness for and response to the pandemic and its impact.

Next week (Tuesday 14 January), the Chair of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, Baroness Hallett, will open hearings for the Inquiry’s fourth investigation (Module 4) examining vaccines, therapeutics and anti-viral treatment across the UK.

This is the first of six sets of public hearings scheduled during a busy year for the Inquiry. The packed 12 months conclude with Module 9 hearings, investigating the economic response to the pandemic, planned for November and December 2025.

The Chair will also be working on the Inquiry’s second report, focused on core UK decision-making and political governance, which she hopes will be published in autumn 2025.

This report will bring together the work of four modules which investigated core political and administrative governance and decision making across the whole of the UK, Modules 2, 2A, 2B and 2C. Hearings were held in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, beginning in October 2023 and finishing in May 2024. The report will analyse the evidence gathered in respect of all four nations and make recommendations for any future response to a pandemic.

The Chair is also working on the Module 3 report: ‘Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on healthcare systems in the four nations of the UK’. Throughout 2025, as the other modules’ hearings end, work will continue on those reports.

In autumn 2024, the Inquiry announced its final Module (the impact on society Module 10), with hearings due to take place in early 2026.

The Chair aims to conclude public hearings in 2026.

For each investigation the Inquiry will produce a report and set of recommendations, published as soon as they are ready, after evidence has concluded. The Inquiry’s first report, Module 1 ‘Resilience and preparedness’, was published in July 2024. Its third report. ‘Impact on healthcare systems in the 4 nations of the UK (Module 3)’ will be published in spring 2026.

In September 2024, the Inquiry published its first Every Story Matters record, with a second record to be published on Tuesday 14 January 2024 at the start of Module 4 hearings. The listening exercise has so far had over 53,000 submissions, with 20 towns and cities across the UK visited and more events planned for 2025.

The updated schedule of hearings is as follows: