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Last year ministers were warned of the dire consequences a future pandemic would unleash in the UK, a leaked report from the Cabinet Office revealed.
Tens of thousands of deaths, crippling economic costs and crunchy public services were forecast in the 2019 National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA), which charted how an outbreak would likely develop.
Heralding the current coronavirus crisis, he recommended storing personal protective equipment and drawing up plans to repatriate the British stranded abroad.
The government was also told to shore up the infrastructure necessary to conduct the tracing of mass contacts, in a revelation that it will dump gasoline over low heat due to lack of evidence.
The 600-page report, which was leaked to The Guardian, will further fuel allegations that the government was caught off guard by the health emergency due to lack of long-term planning.
Chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance, one of the key figures who led the Covid-19 response, signed the briefing last year and impressed on the need for “robust” plans to deal with a pandemic.
The assessment said a relatively mild ‘moderate virulence’ outbreak could lead to 65,600 deaths and could cost the UK £ 2.35 trillion.
It is unclear whether Boris Johnson was prime minister when the report was written, or whether it was released to ministers serving the previous administration under Theresa May.
Labor last night asked why the government had not acted on the advice of the report and demanded that ministers explain themselves.
The bomb revelations came as Britain prepared for its coronavirus death toll to reach the grim 20,000 milestone.
As the country continues to weather the social and economic effects of the virus, the leaked report revealed:
- Half of the population would exhibit symptoms of the virus, while many more would be infected but would be asymptomatic;
- The pandemic would unfold in three waves, with each wave lasting approximately 15 weeks;
- Once the pandemic finally approved, the blow to public services would take years to repair;
- A great public reaction would provoke a government that was considered to have ruined the response to the crisis.
Last year ministers were warned that the government needed solid plans to deal with a possible pandemic virus, according to leaked information from the Cabinet Office that was signed by chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance (in the press photo by Downing Street)
The document, marked as ‘official, sensitive’, war game scenarios to which the government would have to respond, depending on the severity of the virus.
The Cabinet Office declined to comment on the report, and a spokesperson said: “We do not comment on the leaks.”
Shadow Labor Cabinet Minister Rachel Reeves said: ‘The revelations in this report are alarming and raise serious questions about the government’s preparedness for a pandemic.
“Michael Gove is due to make a statement to Parliament on Monday explaining why his recommendations were not implemented.”
Marked as “official, sensitive”, the document faced the potential risks posed by a pandemic and made recommendations to strengthen Britain’s ability to combat it.
An ‘influenza pandemic’, which is closest to the coronavirus outbreak, was considered to present a ‘very high’ risk.
A staggering 65,000 deaths were warned as possible fatalities if a pandemic struck British soil.
One of the recommendations made by Sir Patrick was to ensure a ‘disease surveillance and early detection’ system, essentially the necessary infrastructure for testing and contact tracing.
A common criticism leveled at the government is that it minimized the need for mass testing despite trying a successful strategy in other countries to suppress the number of cases.
Medical director Professor Chris Whitty explained yesterday that the decision to drop contact tracking was “not likely to add a large amount at that particular point, given the resources we had.”
Speaking to members of the Science and Technology Committee, he said the UK initially tried to contain the virus, like other countries, but when it moved into a global pandemic, they changed tactics.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock is now trying to increase testing capacity and is competing to meet the goal of performing 100,000 tests a day by the end of April.
The NSRA also warned that a pandemic would increase pressure on vital public services that would be overwhelmed by the increase in cases.
It said: ‘Critical infrastructure can also be affected during peak periods. There would be a large increase in the demand for health and social care services.
‘In addition to very severe levels of stress in the NHS, the level of excess deaths would increase capacity within organizations involved in managing deaths.
“This would be felt on a national scale, and local capacity is likely to begin to be overwhelmed during the peak of the pandemic.”
Transportation services, energy providers, the food industry, education and the financial sector would be affected, the report warned.
But most poignantly, the security assessment urged ministers to stockpile supplies of personal protective equipment.
Frontline health and welfare workers have been calling for PPE since the epidemic took off in the UK and have described an alarming shortage in hospital settings.
NSRA recommendations included storing personal protective equipment (physicians using PPE at a coronavirus test site)
The need for plans to help British citizens abroad and repatriate them to the UK was also said to be a priority.
At the start of the outbreak, the Foreign Ministry was slow compared to the United States in airlifting citizens from countries affected by the virus, but provided repatriation flights.
The NSRA looked at both the risk of a viral flu pandemic as well as an outbreak of coronavirus, both Sars and Mers were coronaviruses, although this was considered less harmful.
The document included a series of “reasonable worst-case scenarios” for the spread of a flu-like viral pandemic.
He suggested that it would develop in three waves: each one is expected to last 15 weeks and that the peak occurs in weeks six and seven of each wave.
Half of the population would be infected and experience symptoms of the disease during one or wave movement.
The document also details the economic impacts caused by the virus, and the predicted costs could amount to £ 2.35 trillion.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has already delved deep into Treasury coffers to finance £ 320billion in bailout loans, and the closed business costs at closing are also likely to contract the economy.
Even after the pandemic ended, he said it could take months or even years for health and welfare services to recover.
Britain’s coronavirus death toll approaches 20,000 when officials announce 684 more COVID-19 deaths, amid fears that THIRD deaths may occur in nursing homes
By Connor Boyd for MailOnline
Another 684 people have died from coronavirus in Britain, bringing the total number of deaths to 19,506.
Authorities also announced that 5,386 people tested positive for the killer virus in the past 24 hours, meaning 143,464 have been officially diagnosed.
NHS England confirmed that 587 people died in their hospitals, while another 174 deaths were announced in Scotland and Wales.
The victims in England were between 40 and 102 years old, and 34 of them had no known underlying health conditions.
Northern Ireland has yet to announce its new cases and deaths, but the figures are expected this afternoon.
Again there was a disparity in the actual death toll, with the four nations of the United Kingdom announcing 761 deaths between them.
The health agencies of each country record their own daily figures, which do not coincide with those of the Government, since they collect their numbers at different times of the day.
Health Department figures also show that the actual number of cumulative deaths increased by 768, but 84 of them were historically revised, so they are not included in the daily jump.
The government hoped to keep the death toll at 20,000 or less, but recent trends suggest that the UK will reach that morning by counting only deaths in the hospital.
The 684 new deaths mark an increase of 11% from 616 yesterday, but experts are not concerned about the jump as they expect deaths to be in the hundreds for a few more weeks.
Meanwhile, more questions arose about the true number of Britons dying in nursing homes today after figures from Northern Ireland showed that a third of all deaths were elderly residents.
Data from England and Wales have suggested that the actual number of deaths outside of hospitals, which are the only ones recorded by the Department of Health, is around 15 percent.
But Scotland’s figures show that the rate is around 40 percent, which could mean that the true death toll in the UK from COVID-19 is over 27,000.
