Recommendation 15

The Department told us that the stockpile it held at the beginning of the pandemic was exceptionally useful and that there would have been PPE shortages without it. This stockpile was established in 2009, after the swine flu outbreak.28 We questioned the Department on its plans for holding a PPE stockpile in the future and learning from its experience in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department acknowledged that this is going to be a key decision as it would be possible to spend a very large sum of money on a stockpile that is never used or turns out to contain the wrong items for the next disease.29 The Department confirmed that it has not yet decided on what level of stockpile it should hold in the future.30