PHE’s inability to deliver mass testing delayed easing of lockdown
EFFORTS to release Britain from lockdown were repeatedly hampered by the failure to embark on mass surveillance testing, it can be disclosed.
Three and a half weeks after the measures came in, Public Health England (PHE) said it remained unable to deliver a community testing programme for Covid-19, which could allow ministers to ease social distancing rules, documents show. The failings emerged alongside evidence suggesting PHE may have misled the Prime Minister when asked about its testing regime.
Last night, the head of the Commons science and technology committee said the delays and obscuring by health officials had left Britain taking “decisions in the dark”. Minutes from a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), show scientists pressed health officials on the importance of such a regime, to allow informed decision-making. But PHE refused to take on the work, so it was not until April 17 that the Office for National Statistics was asked to take over.
There was repeated frustration from Sage at the slow expansion of testing across the country. On March 13, routine testing and tracing of all cases of Covid-19 was stopped, and efforts limited to hospital cases, staff and suspected clusters of transmission. On the same day, PHE was asked by Sage to “urgently determine” how it would ramp up capacity to take up to 1,000 blood samples a week. It followed warnings on Feb 18 that PHE could only cope with tracking and tracing five new cases a week, with modelling suggesting this could be increased to 50 cases. PHE has since insisted it could cope with tracking efforts for more cases than five, but it has been unable to say what its capacity was.
New evidence shows how even when Britain’s third case – “the Brighton superspreader” – was being
tracked, the PHE system was creaking so slowly that it took six days to track down some of those he had been in contact with.
On March 23, Boris Johnson ordered full lockdown, but the Sage minutes show that another three and a half weeks later there was still no plan to deliver surveillance testing to track levels of Covid-19 across the country.
Minutes of April 16 state: “PHE confirmed it was unable to deliver a community testing programme. Sage agreed that if PHE is unable to undertake the programme, then this should be undertaken within a repeated ONSled household survey programme.”
Greg Clark, chairman of the Commons science and technology committee, said his questioning of PHE officials found they were “very opaque” about their responsibilities. He told The Sunday Telegraph: “We turned off the light on being able to see the detailed nature of the course of the infection. That must be remedied so that in future, decisions aren’t taken in the dark.”
PHE has said it is not responsible for determining overall testing strategy, with the Department of Health and Social Care in overall charge. Duncan Selbie, chief executive of PHE, said in a statement: “There is nothing critical of PHE in what Sage had to say. It is a simple statement of fact that the scale of community serology testing would be more appropriate for the ONS, a decision that PHE supported and welcomed. PHE operates reference laboratories for novel and dangerous pathogens, not large-scale pathology services.”
Meanwhile, footage broadcast this week questions the accuracy of information given to the Prime Minister by PHE. In a meeting between Boris Johnson and Prof Yvonne Doyle, PHE’s director for health protection, at PHE’s laboratory on March 1, the Prime Minister asks if those coming into the UK are automatically tested, or just those who are symptomatic. In the video, broadcast on Channel 4’s Dispatches,
Prof Doyle appears to imply that anyone coming from “hot zones” would get a test. Last night, PHE rejected the suggestion it misled the PM. “All symptomatic people coming from these socalled hot zones would have got a test – that was well understood by everyone,” a source at the organisation said.