Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton's column in this week's Lancet examines the ongoing public inquiry into the UK's response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and lessons for the future. Extracts and a comment from me below.
'Within Johnson's 10 hours of testimony, one could discern why the UK suffered a total failure of its governmental system. Here are ten lessons from Johnson's evidence.
1. The UK Government did not take seriously WHO's declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on Jan 30, 2020. They did take seriously the agency's March 11 announcement that the world was officially in the grip of a pandemic. Ministers lost precious weeks by misunderstanding WHO's initial declaration...
5. Johnson spoke of “the Whitehall mind”—an inability to understand scientific data, to postpone action for fear of overreaction, and to consistently underestimate the scale and pace of the challenge. “We couldn’t comprehend what was happening”, he said...
8. The system of science advice to government was defective. Science advisers only began to take COVID-19 seriously once Italy was hit hard by the virus. They failed to accept the evidence from China that COVID-19 was a serious disease with a high mortality in older and vulnerable populations...
9. Johnson and his 10 Downing Street team did not understand that one of their most important objectives was to protect and strengthen public trust in decision making. From Dominic Cummings’ peregrinations around Barnard Castle to Partygate, the government destroyed public confidence in its leadership.
COMMENT (NPW): While most of the lessons relate to (lack of) collaboration, cooperation and coordination, the four observations above indicate a failure of evidence-informed policymaking, a failure to access, synthesise, interpret, understand and apply evidence. This was evident in many if not most countries worldwide. At one end of the spectrum we have the United States and Brazil actively undermining the public health response, while at the other we have New Zealand, whose response has been globally recognised as a success.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
