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“The goal of the National Institute for Health Protection will be simple: to make Britain one of the best-off countries in the world to fight the pandemic,” a senior minister told the Telegraph. “We want to bring science and scale together in one new body so we can do everything we can to stop a second coronavirus spike this fall.”
The UK was slow to increase its testing and tracking capabilities at the start of the outbreak, and has become one of the countries hardest hit by Europe.
PHE has faced harsh criticism from ministers for its handling of the coronavirus crisis. The government has adopted a new way of counting COVID-19 deaths after worrying that the PHE method is too much for them.
Opposition politicians attacked the movement. Labor’s Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth called the move a “desperate attempt to shift debt”, telling the Mirror: “PHE could have been better prepared if the Tories had not cut back on public health budgets for years and then many of the tests and “And what does this leave behind other important priorities for health care, such as sexual health services, drug and alcohol services, and obesity that PHE carries out?”
Liberal Democrat spokeswoman Munira Wilson tweeted: “Ministers try to deflect responsibility for their shambolic management of the pandemic by a bureaucratic reorganization, drafted [by] their mate who has made such a stormy success of Test & Trace. “
