In its attempts to tackle the Coronavirus epidemic, the UK government is widely perceived as being late to the party, enthusing over Brexit on January 31st, but not starting Covid control measures until five weeks after it might have done.
Informed observers, such as the World Health Organization, which given its global perspective sees more pandemics than any other organization, said from the outset that testing would be critical. We didn’t. During that initial period of inaction, the virus was steadily spreading, largely invisibly, with perhaps 50% or more infections being unrecognized because they were mild or even asymptomatic. Then in a paper on the Wuhan epidemic published on March 16th, a research team from Johns Hopkins University in the US found that as much as 79% of the infections came from people with mild or silent symptoms even though those people were only 55% as infective. The called it the ‘Stealth’ virus. So even before lockdown started in the UK, we were coming from behind with a large but invisible wave of infections already in progress.
That wasn’t the only area where the UK was coming from behind: we were behind, and in some places still are, with personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages even for front line medical staff, and testing is way behind target. Nobody’s really admitting it, but it’s hard to escape the obvious conclusion that the austerity years have taken their toll on the NHS and its resources, and these are some of the consequences. So while the Government has sought solace in the predictions of Professor this and Professor that, who appear to have been largely correct about the course of the epidemic and the lockdown strategy, several serious strategic errors have already been made with the initial inaction, lack of testing and lack of PPE stock.
But there was one more strategic error waiting in the wings. Enter the care homes: in the midst of fighting so many largely self-inflicted fires, the Government either forgot about them or decided care homes weren’t important. This despite one report of an abandoned care home in Italy where many patients were found dead. Many care homes took action themselves with self-isolation, staff staying in residence, and all non-essential visitors being banned. But these caring professionals were also left largely without PPE with many of them effectively being forced to fend for themselves or put themselves on the line. The number of deaths across the care home community is not yet known, but all the signs are that, particularly for those homes that don’t manage to evade the virus, it will be large. Care home staff, dedicated but low paid as they often are, need the same protection as any frontline workers because they may well find themselves on it. Another wake-up call for a Government that sometimes seems too concerned with political issues such showing we don’t need the EU, and whether the prime minister in ‘in charge’ or not.
But every cloud, they say, has a silver lining. In the greener, cleaner and more digitalised society that will emerge from the pandemic, the NHS which saved a prime minister’s life is surely going to be politically untouchable and safe from creeping privatisation.
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