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Care providers say government did not discuss key Exercise Cygnus concerns with them

The report is based on the findings of a government simulation of an influenza pandemic, codenamed Exercise Cygnus. It concluded starkly that Britain was not adequately prepared for a flu-like pandemic’s “extreme demands”.

The 2017 report is likely to raise questions over whether ministers ever implemented key recommendations pertaining to the care home sector.

It contained 26 key recommendations, including boosting the capacity of care homes and the numbers of staff available to work in them. It also warned of the challenge facing homes asked to take in patients from hospitals.

“This is a report that made some really clear recommendations that haven’t been implemented. If they had put in place a response to every one, we would have been in a much better place at the start of this pandemic.”

Covid-19 has swept through the UK’s care homes, killing 6,686 people up to 1 May in England and Wales, in some cases claiming dozens of lives in a single facility. Operators have been beset by shortages of essential personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect staff and limit the spread of the virus among residents who are by definition the most vulnerable to the disease.

The government has kept the Exercise Cygnus report secret since it was first circulated in Whitehall three years ago, and has resisted growing calls for more transparency, which culminated in the announcement of a legal case to force ministers to release the findings. However a copy was leaked to the Guardian, which is publishing the document in the public interest.

The report, marked “Official – Sensitive”, is being published in full, although names and email addresses of government officials have been redacted.

Read the report online

#Exercise Cygnus #coronavirus #covid19 #UK politics #NHS

James Butler writes about the government’s response to the virus

In October 2016, a NHS pandemic planning operation, Exercise Cygnus – the name perhaps inspired by avian flu, or the belief that it addressed a ‘black swan’ event – revealed the service’s inability to cope with a pandemic surge, and raised particular concerns about the amount of Personal Protective Equipment available for staff and the supply of ventilators. Sally Davies, then the chief medical officer for England, made one of the few public references to the exercise in a speech that year, highlighting the NHS’s inability to ‘cope with the excess bodies’, and warning of the enormous social and economic impact of a pandemic – even in a putatively ‘well-prepared’ country like Britain. Details of Exercise Cygnus have recently dribbled into the press; they weren’t released at the time for fear of ‘terrifying’ the public. Perhaps a little terror would have been useful: not much was done to build up the NHS’s stock of PPE, or its supply of ventilators. Government sources briefing journalists on the story have suggested that attention instead turned to the problem of securing supply chains for vital goods (a category which clearly did not include PPE or ventilators).

Hindsight is perfect, and ‘hindsight is perfect’ is a perfect excuse. In January, the present chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, told the cabinet ‘it either stays in China or it will get everywhere.’ By the end of January – at the latest – it was clear ‘it’ was not going to stay in China. The point of risk strategies and pandemic preparedness exercises is that the cabinet should have them to hand when crisis hits; the weaknesses in NHS capacity, and its shortage not only of ventilators but of trained nurses to operate them, should have been a factor in their decision-making in those crucial early days. Were they? When, in other words, did they realise the risk they were running?

The answer appears to be: not early enough. The UK’s initial response to Covid-19 seems to have been guided partly by its modelling of how to deal with a flu pandemic (carried out in 2011): this recommended mitigation of the worst healthcare effects, shielding the most vulnerable people from infection, and meanwhile allowing the virus to spread – so that the general population eventually acquired ‘herd immunity’. The plan did not involve mass testing, or technological tracking and contact tracing of the kind seen in South Korea and Singapore.

#coronavirus #covid19 #UK politics #NHS #Exercise Cygnus

All Our Yesterdays: Day 234

15.03.20. Sunday Telegraph:

“BORIS JOHNSON is putting British industry on a war footing to help deliver the equipment that the NHS needs to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.”

The reason Johnson needed to put the country on a ‘war footing” was because the deliberate suppression of findings of the 2016 Exercise Cygnus (a simulated outbreak of fictitious “swan flu”) had led to a pitiful level of PPE and other essential items needed to successfully deal with a real pandemic.

The Exercise Cygnus report stated:

“The UK’s preparedness and response, in terms of its plans, policies and capability, is currently not sufficient to cope with the extreme demands of a severe pandemic that will have a nationwide impact across all sectors”.

These findings were deliberately kept secret as the Tory policy of austerity put saving money before saving lives.

This is why we were still reading headlines like these nine months later.

05.12.20. healthline:

“Why PPE Is Still in Short Supply for Healthcare Workers... Experts say corruption, greed, and mismanagement are part of the reason why PPE supply isn’t meeting demand.”

WE DESERVE BETTER

#Uk politics #Exercise Cygnus #PPE #pandemic #Covid-19 #death #corruption #greedent #austerity

Government accused of suppressing ‘terrifying’ findings of three-day simulation exercise

The government is on a collision course with the information commissioner over its refusal to publish a confidential report warning that the UK’s health system could not cope in a pandemic.

In a dramatic move, the Information Commissioner’s Office has ordered the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to hand over the report into Exercise Cygnus, or explain its decision for refusing, by 23 October.

Cygnus, a three-day simulation exercise in 2016, assessed the UK’s ability to cope with an influenza pandemic, but its findings are pertinent to the current coronavirus crisis.

Lawyers for an NHS doctor, Moosa Qureshi, who made a freedom of information request six months ago demanding to see the Cygnus report, have accused the government of deliberately delaying its response to his request. There is speculation that this is because the report’s contents would confirm that the government had failed to learn the lessons from its own exercise.

It’s all too evident the government failed to learn any lessons at all. Six months before the covid-19 pandemic Johnson disbanded the anti-pandemic team that Theresa May had mothballed in 2016 the better to focus on Brexit. So, how’s that worked out? To date the UK has the fifth largest death toll from covid-19. It’s “world-beating” track & trace app lurches from disaster to debacle and Johnson’s messages contradict each other resulting in Johnson blaming the public for rising numbers of covid infections. At least the disbanding of the team meant the government could focus on Brexit. The negotiations are going swimmingly, I hear.

#uk #uk pandemic preparedness #johnson government #exercise cygnus #pandemic test exercise #fail