Thread by @rwjdingwall

Have been at conference in Belgium but media coverage suggests two important errors in emerging #CovidInquiry narrative that should be stamped on. 1/Confusion between seasonal and pandemic influenza and 2/Absence of intelligence about coronaviruses (1/8)

First, influenza is a genetically unstable virus. Every year there is genetic DRIFT which is why vaccines have to be fine tuned although many people will have some immune coverage from previous infections (2/8)

Periodically and unpredictably there is a genetic SHIFT which causes pandemics, as in 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009. SHIFT is a radical change that, in effect, makes influenza a novel virus for the human population (3/8)

Learning from the impact of a SHIFT is a reasonable base to start planning for any novel respiratory virus because there is a limited range of potential means of transmission and interventions to manage these. Planning does not need to be virus-specific so much as adaptable (4/8)

Second, NERVTAG was created in 2016. The acronym stands for New and Emerging Respiratory Viral Threats Advisory Group, whose mission was horizon-scanning (5/8)

NERVTAG met 2-3 times every year to review reports collected by PHE about new influenza strains, about the search for a re-emergence of SARS and about any potential evolution of MERS to sustain human to human transmission (6/8)

SARS and MERS are both coronaviruses and were on the NERVTAG radar. NERVTAG also received some of the earliest news of an unidentified respiratory infection in Wuhan and followed this up (7/8)

NERVTAG did what it said on the tin. It scanned for threats, evaluated them and documented its assessments. If others were too busy with Brexit to read the reports, this is not evidence of absence of work by the civil service and public health community (8/8)