Failure to comply with Covid’s damping strategy led to the avoidable deaths in Great Britain

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the failure of government advisers in the UK in the advice of the World Health Organization (WHO) and emerging evidence from East Asia, so that suppression can control a virus that quickly led to the avoidance of death in Great Britain, argues the expert in today’s.

The attenuation aims to avoid domestic blockades and maintain economic activity for most populations by introducing supervision systems to quickly control new outbreaks, thus reducing the reproductive factor of the infection (R0) to below 1 and causing an epidemic to overcome.

Anthony Costello, Professor Global Health at the University College London, if Great Britain warned the damping strategy, could prevent thousands of deaths. He asks why long -term damping strategies are still insufficiently recognized and calls for better management of Pandemic learning in the UK.

He explains that in January 2020, the global threat from Covid-19 was clear, and WHO advised the countries to focus on quick suppression to avoid the direct threat associated with the spread of the new coronavirus.

However, while Greece, Germany, Norway and Ireland took steps to follow these recommendations, the Scientific Advisory Group of the Great Britain Government in the event of a crisis situation (sage) unanimously chose the answer based on pandemic flu, which ignored the various features of transmission of coronavirus.

Sage also did not change advice after reports of rapidly falling cases and indicators of infection in several East Asia countries that focused on suppression. Instead, in March 2020, the government published its plan “delay, research, alleviation” based on flu, which would allow the virus to spread “resistance to herds. “

The unwavering Sage decision to recommend a flu -based response was still defended by her co -chairman, Chris Whitta, medical director in England and Patrick Vallance, the main scientific advisor until 2023, notes Costello. However, their defense is based on three probably incorrect assumptions: that Covid could not be suppressed, that a great second wave could occur, even if it was so, and that suppressing required prolonged national locks.

He admits that Sage met with a difficult and rapidly changing situation at the beginning of 2020, but he claims that his advice for the government was “flawed” and “arose from the failure of the systems.”

For example, Sage did not recommend rapid expansion of tests, plans to mobilize the community of healthcare workers as contact indicators on a scale with hotspot areas and between district health care teams, nor does he advise on key financial resources and support in effective isolation, he writes.

“If Great Britain used the same strategy and achieved the same surplus of cumulative death by March 2024, as South Korea, 69 instead of 344 deaths per 100,000, it could prevent up to 180,000 deaths in Great Britain.”

Bmj asked Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, why they did not recommend the damping reaction, considering who the advice and the evidence appearing at the beginning of the pandemic; about the lack of independent Sage experts; Why were they not more open about health damage policy; And whether they have recommendations that did not focus on damping, but did not receive an answer until the publication.

Costello points out that five years later many people who developed in the wrong reaction of Great Britain are still in the position; They did not change their views on damping and did not have much done to improve the government’s Pandemic Advice Committees or introduce detailed management principles for the future reaction and resistance of the UK’s pandemic.

“Covid inquiry and the British medical establishment should properly criticize this failure of public health,” he concludes.