Tories buried the results of Exercise Cygnus, the pandemic drill which exposed how vulnerable we were back in 2016. Those refusing to believe John Pilger's report on Russia Today, can read about it in the Telegraph if they prefer. telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/2…
While the real Covid-19 epidemic is being played out in public, the report detailing the findings of Exercise Cygnus have never seen the light of day. A senior former government source with direct involvement in the exercise said they were deemed “too terrifying” to be revealed.
“There's been a reluctance to put Cygnus out in the public domain because frankly it would terrify people. It’s right to say that the NHS was stretched beyond breaking point [by Cygnus]. People might say we have blood on our hands..." former senior government source. (Telegraph)
A senior academic directly involved in Cygnus and the current pandemic said: “These exercises are supposed to prepare government for something like this - but it appears they were aware of the problem but didn’t do much about it."
“We’ve been quite surprised at the lack of coherent planning for a pandemic on this scale. All the flexibility has been pared away so it’s difficult to react quickly. Nothing is ready to go.”
The Telegraph has talked to multiple sources with first hand knowledge of Cygnus & all say the exercise revealed significant caps in the NHS’s “surge capacity”.
These gaps, which included a shortage of ICU beds and PPE, were revealed at a time of austerity. Jeremy Hunt, the then health secretary, and Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, were cutting NHS bed numbers at the time rather than adding capacity.
At meeting of the Public Health England advisory board on 26 April 2017, Paul Cosford, the quango’s director for health protection, said a report “setting out the learning & recommendations” from Cygnus “was in the process of being finalised” - it never saw the light of day.
Tellingly perhaps, NHS England, the body which oversees the running of the NHS and was found most wanting by the report, has no mention of the exercise on its website. It’s high fidelity, government-operated search engine returns nothing for the phrase “Cygnus”.
“Throwing money at the problem was not necessarily the solution. The NHS eats up money. It’s a bottomless pit,” said a senior former government source. “We were in a time of austerity and it wasn’t easy.”
A key lesson from the exercise, it notes, is the need for “a better understanding of the likely public reaction” to a pandemic in order to “help the development of a robust communications strategy to assist the response”.
The importance of this will not be lost on Number 10 communication chiefs who have faced criticism in recent weeks for their failure to communicate clearly and effectively with the public.
Key “learning points” in the wake of the exercise included:
> Better understanding of pressures within the social care setting & how these can be jointly managed
> Ensuring the supply & proper use of PPE
> Reviewing the processes for managing excess deaths in a community setting
> Better understanding of pressures within the social care setting & how these can be jointly managed
> Ensuring the supply & proper use of PPE
> Reviewing the processes for managing excess deaths in a community setting
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