Lessons for all from Covid mismanagement in the UK

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Even as the world wondered how to respond to the coronavirus early last year, the UK’s failed efforts have sparked a sinister fascination with many other countries. A nation that is one of the most mature democracies in the world and that took pride in the quality of its governance ended up with one of the highest per capita death rates of any major economy, its trial and error n ‘perhaps equaling the United States. The first official report on what went wrong, a joint investigation by two committees of deputies, sheds valuable, albeit damning, insight. It contains lessons not only for Britain but for others on how best to deal with future health emergencies.

One is to maintain constant availability, but also to prepare for the right risks. Although not the fault of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government but of previous administrations, the NHS had been deprived of resources such as ventilators and intensive care beds. The UK lacked supplies of protective clothing and effective testing and traceability protocols to contain an outbreak. Its pandemic planning did not learn from Sars, Mers and Ebola – including the dangers of new diseases spreading from animals – and was based too rigidly on the assumption that the next pandemic would be the next. flu or something similar.

Once the pandemic arrived, the central idea of ​​the report can be summed up as follows: The Johnson government “followed science” so unconditionally that politicians and scientists fell prey to some form of group thinking – and group was fatalistic and imperfect.

The mechanisms for providing scientific advice were isolated, secretive, and lacked external challenge. Importantly, they haven’t given enough heed to approaches elsewhere, such as the most relentless containment efforts by countries in East Asia. All but one of the 87 people who attended at least one meeting of the government emergency science advisory group were from UK institutions.

Although other countries in Europe and North America initially took an equally ‘fatalistic’ approach, the report says UK ministers have for too long accepted the idea that the virus could not be effectively suppressed and that the population would not tolerate long confinement. In practice, this amounted to accepting that collective immunity, while not being the official objective, was the inevitable result. When Britain’s strategy changed drastically, and belatedly at the end of March 2020, to accept the need for a lockdown, it was due to “national concerns that the NHS could be overwhelmed” rather than a serious decision to follow the emerging international best practices.

The MEPs committee rightly contrasts the flaws of the initial management with the success of the UK vaccination program. Britain, he notes, was very early in investing in vaccine research. Allowing clinical trial results to be submitted on an ongoing basis allowed it to be the first Western country to approve a vaccine. Unlike the overly centralized, long-failed and extremely expensive testing and traceability program, vaccine deployment – the fastest in its infancy of any major economy – has relied on established local networks.

Despite all his ideas, this report cannot substitute for the full public inquiry that Johnson has promised once Covid passes. Its most important implication is that, in retrospect, the most effective response would have been to combine the Asia-Pacific approach – border restrictions, lockdowns and rigorous testing and tracing to suppress the infection – and the Western emphasis on vaccinations. fast once available. . Most of the major economies have fallen on one side of this bilateral approach. For those like the UK who groped their way first, however, the cost in lives has been much higher.

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