How Britain lost track of coronavirus?
On Friday, Feb. 21, Duncan Selbie, chief executive of Public Health England, was in a cheerful mood. It was near the end of the school half-term holiday. He wrote on an official blog that there had been no new positive cases of the new coronavirus that week in the United Kingdom. It was a "testament," he said, "to the robust infection control measures" and the "diagnostic and testing work" at laboratories nationwide.
Selbie, who joked when he took his then £185,000-a-year job in 2013 that his public health credentials could be fitted "on a postage stamp," headed a government agency with a mission to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies. He was now facing an epochal one. Public Health England (PHE) is a cornerstone of the UK's state-run health system; Selbie reports directly to the government's health minister, Matt Hancock.
The agency is much smaller and has a lower profile than the vast National Health Service (NHS) that oversees Britain's hospitals, clinics and general practitioners, providing healthcare to all. Public Health England's 5,500 staff have an important supporting role running laboratories, developing tests for new infections and managing outbreaks in England, home to 56 million of the UK's 67 million people.
Even as Selbie posted his blog, all was not well. Reuters estimates that across the UK between 1,500 and 5,000 people may already have been infected with the coronavirus. The estimate is based on current scientific assessments of the fatality rate from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and an average interval from infection to death of between 18 and 23 days. Within five weeks of Selbie's blog, Britain had hit the peak of an outbreak that has caused at least 43,000 deaths so far, according to the official toll. This compares to 35,000 in Italy, the first country in Europe to be severely affected, or nearly 9,000 in Germany, where, in the early days, the spread of infection appeared similar to Britain. With the exception only of Belgium, Britain has the highest per-capita mortality rate from COVID-19 among major economies, Reuters data show.
As Reuters has reported previously, Britain was slow to impose lockdown measures. That delay was costly. Professor Neil Ferguson, a disease modelling expert from Imperial College, London, has said that introducing lockdown measures a week earlier "would have reduced the final death toll by at least half." Now, a Reuters investigation reveals further missteps and failures by officials and government agencies, including Selbie's Public Health England, in testing, tracking and tracing. "Every mistake that was made did, unfortunately, cost lives," said Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King's College London.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said his government followed scientific advice at all times. Ministers point out that from mid-April, the UK dramatically increased the number of tests carried out and recruited thousands of contact tracers to control outbreaks.
In a statement, Public Health England chief executive Selbie told Reuters his agency's work had helped to save lives. "Beating this virus was always going to be a marathon not a sprint," Selbie said.
"It remains our sole focus and we have done our absolute best with all our available resources." Still, as the country began emerging from its lockdown this month, there was another blow to the government.