WHAT’S THE STORY?

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick yesterday said: “There is no textbook as to how to respond to a pandemic like this.”

To say the least, that is a very tendentious claim.

IS THERE A TEXTBOOK?

Obviously not or we would not be in the mess we are in. But there was something arguably even more crucial than a “textbook” – Exercise Cygnus ­– which took place over three days in October 2016.

The scenario was set against the background of the seventh week of an existing influenza-type pandemic. The Government fought against publishing the full Cygnus report but was eventually forced to do so in October last year, three years after the exercise took place.

The report revealed faults across the board. There were even doubts about whether the UK could bury its dead.

“We’ve just had a three-day exercise on flu on a pandemic that killed a lot of people,” Dame Sally Davies, the then chief medical officer, said of Cygnus in December 2016.

“It became clear that we could not cope with the excess bodies, for instance,” she added.

WHAT WAS EXERCISE CYGNUS?

Almost four years before the current coronavirus pandemic began, 950 public health experts across the four nations of the UK were investigating what might come our way.

The exercise was about checking how prepared the UK was for a pandemic that would kill 200,000 to 400,000 people. All the governments had pandemic plans, but would they work?

The answer was that some would but others wouldn’t and the gaps, particularly in planning, were significant.

WHAT WERE THE CONCLUSIONS?

The first main conclusion was that there was no overview of pandemic response plans and procedures. Secondly, the public reaction to a pandemic was not well understood. Thirdly, at what point would population triage – deciding who lives or dies – kick in?

The report said the UK’s capability to respond to a worst-case pandemic should be critically reviewed. Cygnus also recommended a single body, a Pandemic Concept of Operations.

Cygnus identified care homes as a major source of problems and specifically recommended PPE for carers and more stocks for the NHS. There should also be a review of data handling, said Cygnus.

WHY DID THE GOVERNMENTS NOT FOLLOW IT?

There is still no overview, the public reaction is still not understood, we are not being told about triage, and there’s no single body in charge. The governments are still arguing about what the right approach to care homes should have been.

As for PPE, we all know what happened there.

There must be a public inquiry to investigate governmental response to Covid-19. First question – why did you not fully implement the findings of Exercise Cygnus?