While this may be the first report of many to come from an inquiry expected to last at least four years – it is perhaps the most important.
Of the catalogue of failures, flaws or missed opportunities that played out during the pandemic, many stemmed from the UK’s lack of a plan and resources to deal an inevitable threat.
Perhaps inquiry chair Baroness Hallett’s most damning conclusion is that in 2019 the UK believed itself to be one of the countries best prepared for a pandemic.
Back in 2010, David Cameron’s government set up a National Security Council with responsibility for biological threats, like pandemics.
Plans were made, exercises across Whitehall were conducted, stockpiles of medicines and PPE were established.
But what COVID taught us – through 230,000 deaths, two million more living with long COVID, families destroyed and around £370bn in costs to taxpayers alone – is that plans and preparations were totally inadequate.
There’s no doubt COVID blindsided scientists. Previous coronavirus outbreaks were very different in terms of the way the disease behaved.
The focus on plans for an influenza pandemic is understandable – it was, and remains, one of the most grave pandemic threats we face.
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But what this report has found is even the lessons learned from planning for the wrong pandemic could have improved the response to COVID, had they been properly acted on and shared beyond central government.
The fact, for example, that those with physical or learning disabilities, pre-existing conditions, those in ethnic minorities or living in deprived areas would be disproportionately affected.
The fact that social care, particularly care homes, would bear the brunt of a respiratory virus’s harm – and a huge surge in resources there would be needed in the event of a pandemic.
These issues, which were central to the loss of life and suffering caused between 2020 and 2022, were known. Just some of the “fatal strategic flaws” in assessing risks to society before the pandemic, according to Baroness Hallett.
Her recommendations hope to ensure we are significantly better prepared in future.
Ensuring a single cabinet-level committee responsible for civil emergencies like pandemics seems an obvious and sensible step and whatever strategy is put in place is reviewed, at least every three years along with rehearsals for a pandemic.
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But also, whatever they learn or conclude should be informed by and shared with local authorities, voluntary and community organisations to ensure Whitehall plans work in the places where the harm is greatest – as cruelly demonstrated by COVID.
What the chair of this inquiry wants to see – echoing calls from other recent inquiries like that into the infected blood scandal – is some mechanism is established that requires governments to act.
The economic and political landscape is in constant flux, but so too are the deadly pathogens that mutate and spread in an increasingly connected world.
Implementing the lessons learned from the COVID pandemic isn’t just necessary, it’s urgent.
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