The government was aware that even a “moderate” pandemic would cause major problems for its infrastructure years before the coronavirus hit, according to the Covid-19 inquiry heard today.
Minutes from a Department of Health (CORR) board meeting, routinely attended by ministers, experts and top officials, suggested a lack of resilience to deal with a high demand for resources in a crisis.
Still, ministers decided to put aside plans for a quarantine facility, which would have eased some of the pressure.
The 2016 meeting, a “deep dive” into infectious diseases, revealed that it was “more likely than not that even a moderate pandemic would engulf the system.”
It said: “At the most extreme, there would be significant problems if it became necessary to track down or quarantine thousands of people.” The document added that there was a lack of planning regarding social care.
In the first week of the inquiry, the lead lawyer, Hugo Keith KC, presented the inquiry with an extremely complicated flowchart detailing the government’s chain of command to help protect Britons from future pandemics. Created by the research to represent structures in 2019, the diagram connects more than 100 organizations involved in preparing the country for future infection threats
Professor Dame Jenny Harries, the former deputy chief physician, also admitted today to the Covid inquiry that local health directors were ‘under significant pressure’ due to budget cuts in the years before the pandemic
And it said there were “concerns about how resilient the somewhat fragmented system would be – especially in light of past or future budget cuts.”
The faculty board notes stated that the system would be “overwhelmed very quickly” in the event of a major disease outbreak.
The inquiry found that a decision to “fund high-quality quarantine facilities had already been postponed by ministers.”
Emma Reed, who became director of emergency planning, resilience and response, Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in early 2018, said she was never made aware of the serious concerns identified two years earlier.
Ms Reed said: ‘There was no discussion with me about quarantine.
‘There was no discussion with me about track and trace.’
The survey is now in its third week of its first module, which examines how prepared the UK was for the Covid 19 pandemic and whether it had the resilience to withstand the pressures of a major public health crisis.
Witnesses – including leading politicians and scientists – have told research chair Baroness Heather Hallett that the UK was preparing for the ‘wrong type’ of pandemic, that the government was not asking experts the ‘right questions’ and not learning pandemic lessons from abroad after others outbreaks such as Sars.
Campaign groups have suggested austerity has had an impact on the UK’s ability to withstand Covid.
Professor Dame Jenny Harries, the former deputy chief physician, also admitted today that local health directors were ‘under significant pressure’ due to budget cuts in the years before the pandemic.
She was asked to comment on figures suggesting that council health budgets had been cut by ?200m in 2015 and would face further cuts in subsequent years in the run-up to the pandemic.
Dame Jenny, a former deputy chief of medical services for England, said she agreed that the earmarked public health budget was decreasing over time “due to budget cuts”.
But she added: ‘Those figures need to be seen in context – if there are 152 top-level authorities and there are ?200m cuts in a year, that’s only about ?1m (per authority), then is that a significant million. local population ‘Yet I know that the public health directors were under great pressure.
‘Local governments were often much more efficient in outsourcing services. So they could almost make savings out of that and get exactly the same public health outcomes.
“But they were still under a lot of pressure.”
Former Chancellor George Osborne last week denied suggestions that austerity policies had left the UK underprepared for the pandemic.
Government data through May 23 show the number of deaths of people whose death certificates listed Covid as one of the causes, and the seven-day rolling average. Baroness Hallett told the inquiry she intends to answer three key questions: was the UK well prepared for the pandemic, was the response appropriate and can lessons be learned for the future?
Government data up to June 20 shows number of recorded Covid cases since March 2020. As many as 70 witnesses will contribute to first module on pandemic preparedness
Earlier, Rosemary Gallagher, an expert in infection prevention and control at the Royal College of Nursing, said there was a “significant” national staff shortage in the run-up to the pandemic.
She said: ‘The resilience of the health and care workforce is absolutely essential to deliver health care services that meet the needs of the public.
?We know we entered the pandemic with a significant shortfall ? about 50,000 nurses short.
“That’s why we were immediately in danger when we had to increase capacity to support patients who were infected at home or in hospitals.” The latest figures show that there are currently over 700,000 registered nurses in the UK. At the start of the pandemic, there were an estimated 670,000.
Matt Hancock, the health minister for the 18 months leading up to and beyond during the pandemic, will be called upon on the government’s preparedness for Covid when he gives evidence for the inquiry tomorrow morning.
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