UK government’s coronavirus response beset by mixed messages and U-turns
From supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline staff, to the government’s testing policy and efforts to acquire ventilators for those in critical care, ministers stand accused of a series of mixed messages and U-turns in their response to the pandemic.
PPE
Amid growing criticism by NHS staff that they were not getting the equipment they needed to protect themselves, the Department of Health and Social Care issued a statement in early April refusing to acknowledge a shortage of kit and instead saying there had been an initial problem with distribution.
“In the past two weeks the NHS supply chain have delivered 397m pieces of PPE equipment,” it said. “While we are confident that enough supply is now reaching the frontline, we appreciate there were limited distribution problems to begin with while we dealt with a new demand caused by this emerging epidemic.”
A week after that, on 10 April the health secretary enraged medical unions when he adjusted the government’s position to saying there was enough PPE to go around, but only if workers did not overuse it. “We need everyone to treat PPE like the precious resource it is,” Matt Hancock said.
It was three days later, on Monday evening, that the foreign secretary, Dominic
Raab, finally admitted there had been supply problems, saying there was “a competitive market out there”.
Testing
Announcing that the government would move from the contain phase to the delay phase of its strategy to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, Boris Johnson told a press conference on 12 March that those with any symptoms should stay home for seven days. Appearing alongside him, the chief medical officer for England said they would stop testing people with mild suspected cases. “We will pivot all of the testing capacity to identifying people in hospitals who have symptoms,” Chris Witty said.
Four days later, the World Health Organization told countries battling Covid-19 that testing should form the backbone of their response to the pandemic. “Test, test, test,” said the body’s head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
But one of England’s deputy chief medical officers, Jenny Harries, dismissed this as a message aimed at less developed countries. “There comes a point in a pandemic where that is not an appropriate intervention,” she said.
In an apparent U-turn on the initial strategy, Hancock announced on 2 April a new aim of increasing testing to 100,000 a day by the end of the month.
In Monday’s press conference, nearly five weeks after first turning away from a policy of testing outside
a hospital setting, Whitty said: “One of the things we want to do is to extend the amount of testing of people in care homes as the ability to test ramps up over the next few weeks.”
Ventilators
After first implying that they had not taken part in an EU scheme to source life-saving ventilators because the UK was “making its own efforts” after Brexit, Downing Street admitted on 26 March that it had failed to take part in the programme because it had accidentally missed the deadline. In another twist, it was then revealed that British officials had taken part in four meetings where EU projects to bulkbuy medical kit were discussed – the earliest of them in January.
Speaking to the BBC on 5 April, Hancock said the UK was on track to have ventilators for 18,000 patients, but admitted they may not be in place in time for the peak in hospital admissions – expected by the end of the month. He said that 1,500 ventilators should come into use in the NHS in the following week.
However, the prime minister’s spokesman said on Monday that there had been an increase of just 200 in the previous seven days.
Masks
Asked about the decision by countries including the US to advise people to wear face masks, England’s other deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, said on 3 April: “In terms of the hard evidence, and what the UK government recommends, we do not recommend face masks for general wearing.”
Two weeks later, amid growing calls for the UK to change its advice, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, told Monday’s
Downing Street press conference: “The evidence on masks is much more persuasive for masks stopping you giving it to somebody than it is for you preventing you catching it.
“We have a review ongoing at the moment on the evidence around masks. If that review concludes that the position should change, we will of course make that recommendation and if it stays the same we will make that clear as well.”