Hmm. "22nd January" seems remarkably early, especially if one calibrates against what we now know happened that day.
Here's the minutes of the "precautionary #SAGE" meeting on 22/1/20:
gov.uk/government/pub…
"DHSC and PHE also preparing plans... for the follow up of contacts"
...and the @WHO meeting held on 22-23 January decided *against* declaring #2019nCoV a 'Public Health Emergency of International Concern':
who.int/news-room/deta…
(The #PHEIC wasn't declared until 30 Jan.)
So why were @PHE_uk officials calling @SercoGroup about #CallCentres?
We know #Serco's initial £45.75m #CallCentre contract was awarded (by @DWP) on 20 March: contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/0b32fef… but there's no mention of them attending Dominic Cummings' #BigTech meeting at Number 10 earlier that month:
wired.co.uk/article/domini…
Were things all sewn up by then?
No-one's disputing that @SercoGroup got onto the CCS *framework* via an open process 👇 - that's not the point!
The question is how the company got awarded tens of millions, and then over £100m, in contracts without "fair and open competition".
theguardian.com/business/2020/…
Oops! It appears I may have spoken too soon about the size of those contracts, and by quite some margin - as the unstoppable @carolinejmolloy reveals both @SercoGroup and @SitelUk have just had their #TestandTrace contracts extended:
opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/serc…
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