Pandemic Preparedness: Lessons from SARS and MERS
Sars, a severe coronavirus, spread over the world in 2002, killing approximately 10% of those infected. Although it was quickly suppressed, east Asian countries benefited from the experience and revised their pandemic contingency measures. Their governments wanted to be ready in case the virus resurfaced. On the other side of the planet, the United Kingdom did not react or adapt. Complacency was at play, particularly with the idea that Britain was one of the world’s best prepared for a pandemic.
Lady Hallett’s First Report: A Damning Review
According to Lady Hallett’s first report from the Covid probe, the UK government failed to fulfill its basic responsibility to keep its citizens safe. The UK saw far too many premature fatalities, not only from Covid but also from the closure of health services and a lengthy lockdown that would have been avoided if public health systems had been in place.
Pandemic Preparedness: The Lack of a Containment Strategy
The report contains little encouraging information about government preparedness before 2020. It demonstrates the lack of a containment strategy: why was so little preparation or attention given to public health infrastructure, specifically test, trace, and isolate, before 2020?
Failures of Key Health Secretaries
Why did officials initially believe the virus was unstoppable when other countries demonstrated that containment was possible in 2020 (and had done so with two other coronaviruses, Sars and Mers, in previous years)? Hallett singled out the health secretaries, Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock, for not only maintaining the flawed plan in the years leading up to the Covid pandemic but also leaving things in such disarray that the wider government was unable to coordinate a wider response to what she referred to as “whole-system civil emergencies”.
Pandemic Preparedness: Impact on Healthcare and Social Care Workers
Those who bore the cost of this were social care and health workers who were sent to wards and care homes without appropriate PPE; people who lost their businesses and income as a result of lengthy lockdowns; children who faced months of closed schools; and everyone whose lives were adversely affected by the pandemic and the kneejerk response to managing it.
Health Inequities Exacerbating the Crisis
In addition to a lack of preparation and strategy, the UK was held up by underlying health inequities. When compared to other European countries, Britain does poorly in terms of chronic disease, obesity, and poverty, all of which are risk factors for hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Large portions of the population have health conditions that put them at risk of becoming seriously ill from the disease. A longer trail of failure, less clearly acknowledged by the report, led to austerity policies in the decade preceding 2020, which left people poorer and sicker, and public services unable to cope.
Austerity Policies and Public Health
Large portions of the population have health conditions that put them at risk of becoming seriously ill from the disease. A longer trail of failure, less clearly acknowledged by the report, led to austerity policies in the decade preceding 2020, which left people poorer and sicker, and public services unable to cope.
Ten Harsh Suggestions for Future Preparedness
Fortunately, the report includes ten harsh suggestions and a six-month deadline for a response and plan of action. Their central claim is that the bureaucracy overseeing pandemic preparedness, including who is responsible for what is overly convoluted. When too many agencies and groups are involved, no one is responsible for the reaction. The report advocates for a complete simplification of the system, including a single, independent body in charge of conducting pandemic-planning exercises every three years and informing the public of the results; assessing health variance in the population and identifying at-risk groups; and making sure that a diverse set of voices are brought to the table to avoid groupthink. All of these would make the UK more prepared.
Learning from Global Best Practices
This report offers British self-approval in sharp view. Officials and adepts from the United Kingdom were used to visiting less developed nations in Asia and Africa to advise them on health issues. Britain felt it knew best, rather than learning from the outbreak-response systems established by these countries over years of managing many diseases. When it came time to act rather than lecture, other countries quickly outperformed Britain because they had a clear strategy. Those countries who were able to control without harsh lockdown measures saved lives and money, and then quickly transitioned to mass vaccination and reopening in 2021. Just compare the death rates in Japan and South Korea to the United Kingdom and Sweden.
The Inevitability of Future Pandemics
We shall face another pandemic. The question is not whether, but when. Already, bird flu (H5N1) is changing in cows and other mammals in novel ways, raising the possibility of a human pandemic. The report’s message is powerful: let us not waste the pain and grief of 2020-2022. Let us learn from this experience and improve for the next time. That is something we can all agree on, even so of how we feel about the pandemic or the restrictions.