Senior heads of British health officials managing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK warned four years ago that the disease was a pandemic scenario and a computerized tracking system of personal protective material, contacts and screening needed to be stored. For foreign travelers.
The appeals are contained in a report kept confidential and The Guardian newspaper is now disclosing, the document is dated February 2016.
The report’s authors set out a scenario in which cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV) reached London and Birmingham and rapidly spread as a “mass outbreak”.
Like COVID-19, MERS causes a potentially fatal respiratory disease and can spread without symptoms without a known treatment or vaccine. However, the government says it has focused on the flu and therefore has not prepared the UK to look for protective gear in hospitals or nursing homes.
In August, the government declined to release the document, claiming it “could lead to a loss of public confidence in the government and the NHS response based on a misinterpretation of the report.”
However, the document was released under the Freedom of Information Act on Thursday at the request of Musa Qureshi, a doctor who campaigns for greater transparency about the government’s preparedness for the pandemic, which has so far recorded more than 137,417 People have lost their lives. Own official number.
Some of the key issues raised in the report became issues in the first few weeks of the COVID pandemic. In March 2020, there was a shortage of protective material even for healthcare professionals.
The UK government has also continued to allow people from countries such as China and Italy to enter the country without screening, despite recommendations in this report.
Musa Qureshi says, “It’s a shame that the government covered up the ‘Alice exercise’, a coronavirus exercise that involves isolating patients, tracing contacts, providing protective equipment, trained staff and adequate NHS beds.” The importance of getting it done was predicted.”
