Slow response shows the failure of PHE
The head of the World Health Organisation famously told governments to “test, test, test” – but on March 12, the United Kingdom Government abandoned routine testing in favour of asking people with symptoms to stay at home. Today we can reveal why that decision was taken – and it proves, beyond doubt, that Public Health England (PHE) is not fit for purpose.
Newly released papers from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies show that PHE’s testing capacity was pathetically inadequate. According to the minutes of one key meeting, PHE could only cope with five (yes, just five) new cases a week, requiring what it then believed would be the isolation of 800 people; at best, it was hoped they could stretch this to 50 new cases a week.
That was the real reason why Britain gave up on test and trace, a vital policy that is only now being rolled out properly and which is still plagued with problems.
PHE’s struggle to test – and inability to fix the problem quickly, perhaps by turning to the private sector – has had devastating consequences.
Britain’s appallingly slow response to Covid-19 is an indictment of its bureaucracy. There was planning, yes, but modelled on the wrong sort of infection. Britain turned out to be woefully underresourced for personal protective equipment. The low number of tests was blamed on the lack of a domestic diagnostic industry, which only begs the question, why don’t we have one? And PHE was even accused of turning away offers of outside help. Given its own lack of capacity, this was outrageous.
It’s also why Boris Johnson was right not to fire Dominic Cummings: he needs an advisor with a structural perspective. Many of Britain’s institutions do not work and we’ve been stuck with them for years, thanks to a risk-adverse political consensus that defers to officialdom. If a Tory government is going to effect any meaningful change, it must carry out dramatic structural reforms.
It’s partly his iconoclasm that has earned Mr Cummings so many enemies, but the public will look beyond the political theatre if the Tory reform programme produces results. If the virus does return in the autumn and winter, Britain must be in a position to nip it in the bud through test and trace, without having to shut the whole country down again. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes made earlier this year.