Health Minister Yvette Cooper said on behalf of the government she “deeply regretted” the failures outlined in the report.
She said she had asked officials to “urgently develop plans” to install baby cameras in neonatal units and that the government would fully consider Thirlwall’s other recommendations.
Cooper also said she expects NHS chiefs across the country to live up to their responsibilities to ensure safety.
Later this week she plans to meet with Thirlwall, who made 17 recommendations, including restricting access to insulin, to discuss the investigation in more detail.
A consultant pediatrician who tried to raise his concerns about Letby to hospital management said he believed police should have been contacted earlier.
Dr John Gibbs worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital throughout the period from 2015 to 2016, when Lethby committed her crimes.
“I wish we consultants had been brave enough to follow up our suspicions and take the case to the police sooner,” he said.
“When I say ‘we consultants’, I also have a responsibility and if my other fellow consultants did not go to the police, I should have.”
He also described the failure of consultants to determine the significance of blood test results indicating that the child was poisoned by insulin in August 2015.
He called it “a collective failure of the team.”
He said: “Others of us were on duty and looked after the neonatal ward for the next week or two before the baby left the ward. We all had the opportunity to review the recordings.
“As I admitted when I appeared at the inquest to give evidence, I believe we have let the children down and I apologize to the families for this.
“Lady Justice Thirlwall is careful to point out how we could and should have referred the matter to the police sooner than we did.”
Gibbs said he agreed with the report’s findings that hospital leaders have multiple opportunities to act and potentially save infants’ lives.
Thirlwall made clear that her investigation was not an investigation into Lethby’s guilt, something that some supporters of the jailed nurse still dispute.
Several Lethby supporters gathered outside Liverpool Town Hall to voice their concerns over her sentence, calling for her release, before Thirlwall presented the findings of her investigation.
Lethby, 36, is currently serving 15 life sentences for the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of seven others.
She was convicted in 2023 and was twice refused permission to appeal her conviction.