The failure to adopt the strategy to suppress covid led to avoidable deaths in Great Britain

At the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic, the failure of the advisors of the British government advisor to follow the advice of the World Health Organization (WHO), and that emerging evidence from East Asia that the oppression could quickly lead to avoidable deaths in Great Britain argues in an expert in The BMJ Today.

The oppression aims to avoid national closures and maintain the economic activity for most of the population by introducing surveillance systems in order to quickly control new outbursts, which means that the reproductive rate of the infections (R0) must be doubled to under 1 and the epidemic.

Anthony Costello, Professor of Global Health at the University of College London, would have pursued Britain of a strategy of oppression that it could have prevented thousands of deaths. He asks why long -term strategies of oppression are still not recognized and requires better governance of British Pandemic Consulting.

In January 2020, the global threat of Covid-19 was clear and the WHO advised countries to concentrate on quick oppression in order to avoid an immediate threat from the spread of the new coronavirus, he explains.

While Greece, Germany, Norway and Ireland took measures to follow these recommendations, the scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) unanimously chose a reaction on the basis of the panda rib, which ignored the different characteristics of the Coronavirus transmission.

Sage did not change his advice after reports on quickly falling cases and infection rates in several East Asian countries that focused on oppression. Instead, the government published its plan in March 2020, delayed, researched, mitigate “on influenza, which would enable the virus to spread to” herdish “.

Sage's unshakable decision to recommend an answer based on Influenza continued to be defended by his co-chair, Chris Whitty, England's Chief Medical Officer, and Patrick Vallance, chief science advisor until 2023. However, their defense is based on three false assumptions: that Covid could not be suppressed that a huge second wave could follow, and this oppression required longer national closures.

He admits that Sage was exposed to a difficult and quickly changing situation in early 2020, but says that his advice to the government “incorrectly” and “from the system failure”.

For example, Sage did not recommend a rapid expansion of the tests, formed plans for mobilizing health personnel in the municipality as a contact tracer in scale to Hotspot areas and in all district health protection teams or advise the most important financial and supportive measures for effective self-insulation, he writes.

“If the United Kingdom had followed the same strategy and had reached the same cumulative mortality rate as South Korea until March 2024, 69 instead of 344 deaths per 100,000, it might have prevented up to 180,000 deaths in Great Britain.”

The BMJ asked Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance why they had not recommended an oppression reaction, given the advice and the resulting evidence at the beginning of pandemic. About sages lack of independent experts; Why they were no longer pronounced about health damage guidelines; And whether they stand by the recommendations they made so as not to concentrate on the oppression, but not to have received an answer at the time of publication.

Costello points out that many of the people who have developed the incorrect reaction in Great Britain are still five years after the post. They have not changed their views of oppression, and little has been done to improve the committees of pandemic advice on state consultations or to introduce detailed governance rules for future pandemic reaction and resilience in Great Britain.

“The Covid examination and the British medical facility should properly criticize this failure of public health,” he concludes.