Campaigners said they would press the health secretary, Matt Hancock, to publish in full a secret review of the UK’s preparations to deal with a flu-like pandemic after a partial leak revealed it had warned the country was not ready to cope. Exercise Cygnus, a 2016 dry run to test how the UK would respond, specifically warned that social care would struggle in a pandemic crisis but did not discuss in detail the need for testing or protective equipment for carers. Elements of the 57-page document were leaked to the Sun on Tuesday but the full document remains secret, prompting renewed calls from an NHS doctor, Moosa Qureshi, and his lawyers Leigh Day for the government to release it without delay.
According to the newspaper, the report’s author, Helen Shirley-Quirk, the then director for emergency preparedness and health protection policy at the Department of Health, wrote: “The UK’s preparedness and response is not currently sufficient to cope with the extreme demands of a severe pandemic.” The full document, written in 2017, recognised that a pandemic outbreak was “the most significant civil emergency risk” facing the UK. It was shared around the government, but ministers have refused to make it public amid concerns that its conclusions could frighten the public. Cygnus took place over three days in October 2016 and was led by Dame Sally Davies, the then chief medical officer for England. The document concluded: “The exercise did show that the UK’s capability to respond to a worst case pandemic influenza should be critically reviewed.”
Campaigners led by Qureshi, a member of the whistleblowers campaign group 54000 Doctors, first called for Cygnus to be made public over the weekend, arguing that publication would allow the public to see whether its recommendations had been properly followed through. A crowdfunding page to help commence judicial review proceedings has already raised more than £33,000 of the £50,000 required to meet legal fees. Members of Qureshi’s legal team indicated that the latest leaks highlighted the need to get the full document into the public domain. “The Government’s position is now untenable,” Qureshi added. Hancock told LBC radio on Tuesday morning that he had been advised by officials that the lessons of Cygnus had been taken on board, when reports of the existence of the secret exercise began circulating a month ago. “I asked my officials to go back when this first came up in the press a few weeks ago and check that everything that was recommended was done and that’s the assurance that I got,” the minister said, adding the exercise took place “before my time”, when Jeremy Hunt was health secretary. The latest leak includes some further details. Cygnus warned that social care could be at risk of collapse, partly because it was expected that the NHS would discharge elderly patients into increasingly crowded care homes.
It concluded that an NHS under severe pressure would have to concentrate its efforts on treating younger and fitter patients through a process of “population triage” – and that as many of half of health service staff could be off sick. But there was only one reference to personal protective equipment – a recommendation that more distribution points were needed around the country – suggesting the issue that has dogged the NHS in the current crisis was not deemed a high priority in the dummy exercise. Hancock said the UK’s preparations were “were amongst the most extensive in the world”. But he added there were also limits to what could be done in advance, particularly given that Cygnus was focused on a future outbreak of flu, not coronavirus. “You can’t prepare for a virus that is itself new by its nature,” the minister said.