PHE ‘failed to learn lessons’ of pandemic

PUBLIC Health England has been accused of failing to learn the lessons of the first wave of coronavirus after Duncan Selbie, the body’s chief executive, insisted its decision to drop mass contact tracing in March was “entirely appropriate” as “people weren’t moving around”.

Senior Conservatives said PHE’s leadership appeared not to realise “quite how much harm they did” by failing to carry out mass testing and contact tracing during the peak of Covid-19 infections. The agency is responsible for preparing for, and re

sponding to, pandemics, but The Sunday Telegraph understands that senior government figures are discussing plans for a radical overhaul of PHE, including proposals to introduce new structures to manage the country’s response to a pandemic ahead of a potential second wave of infections.

Mr Selbie’s robust defence of the decision to switch to “targeted” tracing of infections appears at odds with an explanation by Prof Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, who said last week that the country simply “had no capacity” to implement a test-and-trace scheme on the scale that had been needed at the height of the epidemic.

Addressing members of PHE’s advisory board last week, Mr Selbie said: “We moved from mass contact-tracing to targeted contact-tracing, which was entirely appropriate, scientifically and clinically, because we had lockdown and people weren’t moving around. So our focus went on to prisons and into care homes – remained in care homes – and complex businesses that were remaining open.”

In the absence of preparations for a mass testing and contact-tracing

scheme, the Government set up NHS Test and Trace in May.

Separately, the Army was drafted in to set up mobile testing units.

Today, Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, reveals that military personnel will hand over to contractors by the end of this month.

David Davis, the former Cabinet minister, said Mr Selbie’s remarks suggested that “even now after the failure of PHE to deliver sufficient testing sufficiently early, the senior management does not understand the seriousness of its errors” or “quite how much harm they did, which of itself is shocking”.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, claimed that PHE had “got more wrong than right”, and said in most private companies “that would lead to someone departing”.

He added: “It’s one thing to be wrong but it’s another thing not to notice you were wrong. This hugely worries me.”

Prof Karol Sikora, a prominent oncologist, said he was concerned about PHE’s ability to continue responding to the pandemic when its leadership appeared to have failed to have learnt lessons from the initial wave.

PHE’s future was thrown into doubt last month after Boris Johnson suggested parts of the Government’s response had been “sluggish”.

Addressing PHE’s advisory board on Wednesday, Mr Selbie said: “We actually did more contact tracing in the delay phase than we did in the contain phase. And now we’re in the recovery phase, with Test and Trace, we’ve now got the capacity to contact trace whatever.”

In March, Dr Jenny Harries, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, claimed that mass testing and contact tracing was

‘It’s one thing to be wrong but it’s another thing not to notice you were wrong. This hugely worries me’

“not an appropriate mechanism as we go forward”. But she later admitted that “if we had unlimited capacity we would have done things differently”.

Yesterday, Mr Selbie said: “In line with the pandemic plan we moved to targeted contact tracing when the Government decided to move to the delay phase, recognising that community transmission was widespread.

“During the delay phase we successfully contact traced over 7,000 incidents in care homes, hospitals and prisons.

“We now have NHS Test and Trace in place, with PHE leading on the most complex outbreaks, ready to play its part in defeating the virus.”