Scientists fault UK’s pandemic strategy as deaths rise
As the coronavirus continues to infect people across Britain in what will likely turn out to be Europe’s worst outbreak, the government has come under criticism from scientists, who say it has neglected the fundamentals of epidemic control.
Hundreds of outbreak experts have questioned the UK’s pandemic response, ridiculing the government’s claim of “following the science”.
“There was a sense of fatalism and I think the government ruled out containment options that should not have been ruled out,” said Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “Now we have to deal with the fall-out.”
The fallout includes a death toll that has reached 28,809. That is only slightly less than Italy, Europe’s worsthit nation with 29,079 deaths.
For weeks, the UK was focused on widespread testing, setting itself the goal of conducting 100,000 Covid-19 tests a day by the end of April. It met the target but has failed to keep the number at that level.
Epidemic experts warned that Britain’s overwhelming focus on testing ignored an equally essential element of outbreak control: tracking and isolation of contacts of cases.
Allyson Pollock, a public health doctor at Newcastle University said Britain ignored basic World Health Organisation guidelines.
“The government put far too much weight on testing and the strategy now seems quite confused,” she said.
That follows an already delayed response to the pandemic. While WHO declared the coronavirus to be a global emergency on January 30, it wasn’t until March 5 that Britain made the disease “notifiable”, requiring doctors to report it.
Britain’s department of health said recently it would train 18,000 people to track contacts of cases to monitor the virus’ spread, and aimed to have them in place by mid-May. But it has not released details of how the programme will work. Such lack of precision, experts worry, could lead to a devastating second wave of disease.
Still, some of the UK’s leading disease experts have applauded Britain’s response. Dr Jeremy Farrar, who heads the Wellcome Trust, said it was correct to focus on testing while developing more detailed plans.
But David McCoy, a professor of global public health at Queen Mary University of London, said Britain’s pandemic response plan has been overly influenced by mathematical models rather than established outbreak interventions.
“The problem with models is they just produce scenarios based on assumptions that may be right or wrong and they don’t tell you what you should do,” he said.
Some have also questioned the independence of the government’s scientific advisers, especially after it emerged Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief aide, Dominic Cummings, attended meetings of the UK’s top scientific advisory committee. Some scientists argued that having political aides at meetings compromised experts’ ability to assess evidence or make recommendations independently of political considerations.
The department of health dismissed concerns about the validity of its outbreak strategy and said it has been “guided at all times by the best scientific advice”.
Annelies Wilder-Smith, a public health expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was troubling that Britain had no plans to isolate contacts of cases, similar to what was done in China and Singapore.
“If you don’t isolate contacts who could have the disease, then they will just stay at home and infect their friends and families,” she said. — AP