Government was warned NHS would struggle to cope with pandemic three years ago
The government was warned three years ago that the NHS would struggle to cope in the event of a pandemic like coronavirus, it has been revealed.
A major cross-government test called Exercise Cygnus was carried out in October 2016 to examine how well the NHS would handle a severe outbreak.
After the damning test results were collected, ministers were reportedly warned that Britain’s health service would be quickly overwhelmed - but the government failed to act on the report’s recommendations.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, Exercise Cygnus showed the NHS lacked adequate “surge capacity” and would require thousands more critical care beds.
It also found mortuaries would be quickly overwhelmed and there would be a lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for doctors and nurses.
After the report’s findings were heard by ministers, they were reportedly barred from publication over fears the results would scare the general public.
“There has been a reluctance to put Cygnus out in the public domain because frankly it would terrify people,” a former senior government source told The Sunday Telegraph.
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“It’s right to say that the NHS was stretched beyond breaking point [by Cygnus].
“People might say we have blood on our hands, but the fact is that it’s always easier to manage the last outbreak than the one coming down the track.
“Hindsight is a beautiful thing.”
Despite the failings exposed by Cygnus, the government reportedly never changed its strategic roadmap for a future pandemic, with the last update carried out in 2014.
More than 1,000 people have died after contracting the virus, the Department of Health revealed on Saturday.
Covid-19 related deaths in the UK jumped from 759 to 1,019 – an increase of 260 and by far the biggest day-on-day rise since the outbreak began.
On Saturday the editor of a British medical journal said NHS bosses could have prevented “chaos and panic” in a system left “wholly unprepared for this pandemic”.
Richard Horton wrote in The Lancet that numerous warnings were issued to the NHS but these were not heeded, but his claims were branded inaccurate by the NHS.
He cited an example from his journal on January 20, pointing to a global epidemic: “Preparedness plans should be readied for deployment at short notice, including securing supply chains of pharmaceuticals, personal protective equipment, hospital supplies and the necessary human resources to deal with the consequences of a global outbreak of this magnitude.”
Dr Horton said the Government’s Contain-Delay-Mitigate-Research plan had failed.
He said: “It failed, in part, because ministers didn’t follow WHO’s advice to ‘test, test, test’ every suspected case. They didn’t isolate and quarantine. They didn’t contact trace.
“These basic principles of public health and infectious disease control were ignored, for reasons that remain opaque.”
He added that “The result has been chaos and panic across the NHS”.