At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the failure of UK government advisers to follow the advice of the World Health Organization (WHO) and emerging evidence from East Asia where repression could bring the virus quickly to deaths from the United Kingdom, The bmj today.
Repression aims to avoid the national lock and maintain economic activity for most population, quickly introducing surveillance systems to quickly bring new outbreaks, thereby reducing the reproductive rate of infection (R0) below 1 and causing the eye to the epidemic.
Anthony Costello, a global health professor at the University of London, says if the United Kingdom followed a strategy of repression, could prevent thousands of deaths. He asks why long -term repressive strategies are still undervalued and demanding a better governance of the UK scientific scientific advice.
In January 2020, the global threat from the Covid-19 was clear and that advised the countries to focus on rapid repression to avoid immediate threat from the spread of the new Korai, he explains.
However, while Greece, Germany, Norway and Ireland have taken steps to follow these recommendations, the United Kingdom’s Scientific Counseling Team for Emergency Needs (Sage) unanimously chose an answer based on the pandemic influenza that ignored its different characteristics.
Nor did Sage change his advice after reports of rapidly falling cases and rates of contamination in various East Asian countries that had focused on repression. Instead, in March 2020, the government published the “content, delay, research, mitigation” “draft based on the influenza that would allow the virus to spread to achieve” herd immunity “.
Sage’s steadfast decision to set up an influenza -based response continued to defend his co -chair, Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer and Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser by 2023, notes Costello. However, their defense is based on three undoubtedly incorrect cases: that Covid could not be suppressed, that a huge second wave could follow even if it was, and this repression required prolonged national locking.
He acknowledges that Sage faced a difficult and rapidly changing situation in early 2020, but says his advice to the government was “wrong” and “resulted from the failure of the systems”.
For example, Sage did not constitute a rapid expansion of tests, forming plans to mobilize health workers, such as scale tracers in hotspot areas and all health protection groups or advises basic financial measures and support measures for effective self-deprivation.
“If the United Kingdom followed the same strategy and achieved the same excessive percentage of cumulative mortality until March 2024 with South Korea, 69 instead of 344 deaths per 100,000, it could prevent up to 180,000 deaths of the United Kingdom.”
BMJ asked Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance because they had not set up a repression response, given the advice of emerging evidence early on the pandemic. for the lack of independent Sage experts. Because they were no more honest for health damage policies. And if they stand for the recommendations they made not focus on repression, but they had not received a response from the time of the publication.
Costello points out that, five years later, many of the people who developed the UK’s defective response are still in a position. They have not changed their views on repression, and few have been done to improve the government tips of advice or to introduce detailed rules of governance for the future reaction and resilience of the United Kingdom.
“Covid’s research and the UK medical institution should properly criticize this failure of public health,” he concludes.
Source:
Magazine report:
Analysis: The UK decision not to suppress Covid raises questions about medical and scientific advice. The bmj. Doi.org/10.1136/BMJ-2025-082463
