The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has published the first module report, into the UK’s resilience and preparedness for the pandemic.
Investigating the state of the nation’s structures and procedures that were in place for it to prepare for and respond to a pandemic, the report focused on eight specific areas. These were:
- Core UK decision-making and political governance
- Healthcare systems
- Vaccines and therapeutics
- Procurement and distribution of key equipment and supplies
- The care sector
- Test, trace and isolate programmes
- Children and young people
- The economic response to the pandemic
Whilst the report acknowledges that the government were forced to make ‘tough decisions’ about how resources should be used to prepare for emergencies and that preparations cost money regardless of whether the worst is to happen, it does find that there were significant flaws.
When identifying the failings, the report found that the UK had been planning for a flu outbreak, however, the preparations weren’t adequate enough for the global pandemic that hit, whilst the pandemic strategy was developed in 2011. This made it outdated and too inflexible to adapt to the 2020 pandemic. The inquiry also found that emergency planning was complicated by the high number of institutions and structures that were involved, whilst there was a flawed approach to risk assessment.
Existing health and social inequalities were also not considered during the planning process, with local authorities and volunteers not being adequately engaged, whilst there was an apparent ‘failure to fully learn from past civil emergency exercises and outbreaks.’ The remaining three failings were:
- A lack of attention paid to the systems for testing, tracing and isolating throughout the pandemic, with policy documents being out of date, full of jargon, and overly complex.
- Ministers weren’t given a broad enough range of scientific advice, whilst also failing to challenge the advice they did receive.
- Advisers weren’t afforded the freedom and autonomy to express different opinions, which resulted in a lack of diverse perspectives.
After summing up these failings, the report outlined how, if the county had been better prepared for the pandemic, ‘we could have avoided some of the massive financial, economic and human cost’ that Covid-19 brought.
In response to the inquiry’s report, the Health Foundation said:
“We welcome the publication of Baroness Hallett’s first Covid Inquiry report, which lays bare the country’s shocking lack of preparedness for the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The failure of strategic planning for a major health emergency was compounded by the lack of resilience within public services. The NHS went into the pandemic struggling to keep up with growing waiting lists, following a decade of low spending growth and chronic staff shortages. Between 2010 and 2019, if UK health spending per person had matched the EU14 average, then the UK would have spent £40 billion higher than actual average annual spending. Lack of capacity limited the NHS’s ability to deal with a surge in demand, which led to too many people going without the care they needed and many died as a result. In England, support for the social care sector, which was already thread-bare, was too slow and limited, resulting in inadequate support for people using and providing care.
“The consequences of this were devastating.”
In order to improve how the nation might respond to a similar emergency in the future, the report has recommended a major overhaul of how the UK Government – and the devolved governments in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – prepare for these emergencies. This overhaul would see a ‘radical’ simplification of the preparedness and resilience systems, including the rationalisation and streamlining of bureaucracy and simpler leadership. Alongside this, a new approach to risk assessment would offer a more comprehensive evaluation of the wider risks that would come with a large-scale civil emergency.
The development of strategy should also now follow a UK-wide approach that is able to learn lessons from the past, taking account of existing vulnerabilities and inequalities, as well as the improvement of data collection systems and sharing in anticipation of future pandemics. Furthermore, the report has recommended that external expertise should be brought in to challenge the government and civil service, whilst regular reports should be published on the preparedness and resilience for a civil emergency.
It has also been suggested that a UK-wide pandemic response exercise should be held at least every three years, with the outcome to be published.
The final recommendation, which the report has labelled as the most important, the government should create a single, independent, statutory body that will be responsible for the entire system's preparedness and response. This will consult widely with experts in this field, whilst working with the voluntary, community, and social sectors to offer the government strategic advice and recommendations.
Image credit: iStock
Video credit: The UK Covid-19 Inquiry
![[Left to right] Prof. Ronan Killeen - Consultant Radiologist at St. Vincent's Private Hospital, Andy Wilks - Head of Enterprise Services for Siemens Healthineers Great Britain and Ireland, Edel O’Keeffe - Director of Finance at St. Vincent's Private Hospital, Ghada Trotabas - Managing Director of Siemens Healthineers Great Britain and Ireland, Brian Fitzgerald - Chief Executive Officer of St. Vincent's Private Hospital with Grania Heal – Country Head for Ireland at Siemens Healthineers, and Rob Ruttledge](/sites/nhe/files/styles/teaser/public/2024-09/Press%20release%20image-24.jpg?itok=gHKP-rtG)
