Article Summary
A failure to follow World Health Organization (WHO) advice and emerging evidence from East Asia led to avoidable UK deaths in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an expert in The BMJ. The UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) chose a response based on pandemic flu, rather than suppression, which could have brought the virus under control quickly. Had the UK followed a suppression strategy, it might have prevented thousands of deaths.
What This Means for You
- Governments should prioritize suppression strategies to reduce the reproductive rate of infection and prevent avoidable deaths.
- Policy makers should consider independent experts and emerging evidence when making decisions during pandemics.
- Better governance of pandemic science advice is needed to ensure more effective responses in the future.
- The COVID inquiry and the medical establishment should properly critique the UK’s flawed pandemic response.
Original Post
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the failure of UK government advisers to follow World Health Organization (WHO) advice and emerging evidence from East Asia that suppression could bring the virus under control quickly led to avoidable UK deaths, argues an expert in The BMJ.
Suppression aims to avoid national lockdowns and maintain economic activity for most of the population by introducing surveillance systems to bring new outbreaks under control quickly, thus reducing the reproductive rate of infection (R0) to below 1 and causing the epidemic to wither.
Anthony Costello, professor of global health at University College London says, had the UK followed a suppression strategy, it might have prevented thousands of deaths. He asks why long-term strategies of suppression continue to be under-recognized and calls for better governance of UK pandemic science advice.
In January 2020, the global threat from COVID-19 was clear and the WHO was advising countries to focus on rapid suppression to avoid an immediate threat from the spread of the new coronavirus, he explains.
Yet while Greece, Germany, Norway, and Ireland took steps to follow these recommendations, the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) unanimously chose a response based on pandemic flu that ignored the different characteristics of coronavirus transmission.
Nor did SAGE change its advice after reports of rapidly falling cases and infection rates in several East Asian countries that had focused on suppression. Instead, in March 2020, the government published its “contain, delay, research, mitigate” plan based on influenza that would allow the virus to spread to achieve “herd immunity.”
Key Terms
- COVID-19
- suppression
- Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE)
- World Health Organization (WHO)
- herd immunity
- pandemic flu
- governance of pandemic science advice
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