A week of missed chances, blame games and a loss of confidence
Public Health England bears the brunt of criticism as almost half of staff say leadership is lacking
MINISTERS and Whitehall officials insist they want to avoid a “blame game” for the UK’s apparently under-powered efforts to carry out mass testing to date.
The remarks that follow such claims tend to involve implicit or explicit criticism of Public Health England (PHE), the quango responsible for protecting the nation during health emergencies, such as pandemics.
An official survey of PHE staff found confidence in the organisation’s leadership was lacking from within as well. Less than half (49 per cent) of its employees who took part in the recent survey said they had confidence in senior managers’ decisions.
In Downing Street, confidence appears to have been lacking in recent weeks in both the Department of Health and PHE, with an acknowledgement that more should have been done earlier to roll out mass testing, particularly of NHS staff unable to work because they or their families had symptoms.
One claim repeated inside and out
‘We didn’t have the tests as the epidemic took off, available to really roll it out on a national scale’
side Whitehall is that PHE failed to capitalise on offers of help from the private and academic sectors to help increase its capacity.
Tom Shinner, the official previously in charge of no-deal planning, was drafted back to No10 a fortnight ago, having left Whitehall last year to become chief operating officer of Entrepeneur First, a tech investment firm.
The week in which public focus turned to testing coincided with Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, and Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, all physically isolated from each other suffering with varying degrees from Covid-19 symptoms. Mr Johnson, who still had a temperature yesterday, and Mr Cummings remain in isolation, although the Prime Minister has continued to chair daily meetings.
Lord Bethell has been appointed as the de facto minister for testing in the Department of Health, while Mr Hancock named Prof John Newton, the director of health improvement at PHE, as the senior official who would steer through the new plan to reach 100,000 tests per day by the end of this month.
Department of Health teams will, among other tasks, be responsible for involving industry and universities in efforts to ramp up the number of tests.
Experts increasingly see mass testing, together with tracing contacts of those who have tested positive, as key to helping the UK out of its impasse.
Yesterday, Prof Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London expert on whose modelling the Government has relied, said he was “hopeful” that some of the strict social distancing measures could be substituted with rapid access to testing and contact tracing in a few weeks’ time – once numbers are lower.
Speaking to Today on BBC Radio Four, Prof Ferguson said that in January, when Covid-19 was discovered in the UK, “it wasn’t felt by PHE and others that we could ramp up testing fast enough for it to be an option then”.
When testing and contact tracing was rolled out the following month, it focused on those returning from affected countries. An early detection policy, involving the isolation of all positive cases and their contacts, appears to have significantly helped to reduce the virus’s spread in countries such as Singapore and South Korea.
In the UK, however, “we didn’t have the tests as the epidemic took off, available to really roll it out on a national scale,” Prof Ferguson said.
Now, in early April, there not only remains a major shortfall in the capacity to test large sections of the population, but, as of Friday only 5,000 of the NHS’s 1.4million staff had been tested, with many remaining off work, without tests, because members of their households have symptoms.
Some Cabinet members are among those who are sceptical of Mr Hancock’s pledge to reach 100,000 tests by the end of this month amid concern that ministers have rushed through major announcements without the evidence they can be followed through.
On March 24, Mr Hancock said: “We have bought 3.5 million antibody tests. That will allow people to see whether they have had the virus and are immune to it and can get back to work.”
But on Thursday, the Department of
Health conceded that the Government had not bought the tests but had agreements to allow them to buy 3.5million kits from a number of manufacturers, provided they won official approval.
“We have not yet bought any tests but we do have contracts agreed subject to testing,” a spokesman said.
Yesterday, Duncan Selbie, the PHE chief executive, told this newspaper that the body had “moved heaven and earth to develop an accurate test, ensuring that every hospital patient that needs one has been tested”.
“We and our NHS colleagues have delivered our promise of 10,000 tests a day on time and are on track for 750,000 tests per month by the end of April,” he added, referring to his 25,000-per-day target.
Mr Hancock’s new five-point plan to ramp up testing to 100,000 per day includes swab testing to see which patients have the virus, and antibody tests, which would establish whether individuals have already recovered.
Under the plan, PHE is “leading” on proposals to increase the number of tests of inpatients and the most critical workers from 13,000 to 25,000 per day by the middle of this month. The Department of Health is leading work on all other forms of testing as well as ensuring the involvement of private and academic bodies.
The set-up appears to leave significant room for inter-governmental blame if the target fails to materialise. But one Whitehall source insisted that with the return of Mr Hancock and Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, after week-long isolations, “it feels like the grown-ups are back”.