Coronavirus: The pandemic warnings the government is accused of ignoring

The evidence points to the government being guilty, over many years, of failing to prepare for the worst, writes Rob Merrick

The PM has clearly botched this one (AFP)

There is no doubt Boris Johnson badly botched his response to the coronavirus outbreak, refusing for crucial weeks to impose the unpopular restrictions necessary to save lives.

Incredibly, ministers and scientists flirted with not suppressing its spread too much, in order to create “herd immunity” among the public – a theory hastily abandoned as the death toll threatened to explode.

But what about long before anyone had even heard of this strange new illness wreaking havoc in China? Is the government guilty of failings stretching back many years?

The evidence points to yes, according to a series of documents on “pandemic preparedness” over the last decade – which suggest warnings were ignored again and again.

“NHS fails to cope with bodies in flu pandemic test,” screamed a headline in The Times way back in December 2016, reporting on something codenamed Exercise Cygnus.

The findings of this crucial dry run have never been made public, but then-chief medical officer Sally Davies gave us the gist – and it should make Johnson shudder, as he self-isolates in his Downing Street flat.

“We’ve just had in the UK a three-day exercise on flu, on a pandemic that killed a lot of people,” she told the World Innovation Summit for Health at the time.

“It became clear that we could not cope with the excess bodies, for instance. It becomes very worrying about the deaths, and what that will do to society as you start to get all those deaths.”

Most glaringly, Dame Sally warned of “inadequate ventilation” if a pandemic struck – foreshadowing the critical shortage of ventilators in our hospitals which threatens to leave doctors playing God.

At the time, memories were still fresh of the swine flu outbreak in 2009, which was mild in comparison with today’s crisis but still killed hundreds of people in Britain.

Yet, despite systems being found so badly wanting by Exercise Cygnus, there is no evidence that government planning for a future pandemic changed.

Last week, Sir David King, a former chief scientific adviser, said: “In 2016 there was a report that indicated our hospitals would not be ready for an epidemic of this kind.

“In a pandemic, you can’t wait. If we’d acted earlier, we might have been out of the current situation much sooner.”

Depressingly, similar preparation plans were tested – and found to fail – in 2011, 2012 and 2014.

When Covid-19 has been conquered, or at least contained, the inevitable inquiry must delve deeply into dusty files to unearth just how badly our leaders failed us.