Recommendation 1

The Government’s risk assessment processes correctly identified the threat posed by biological risks and classified an influenza pandemic among the highest ‘tier-1’ risks to the UK’s security as early as 2010. With hindsight from the covid-19 pandemic, the fatalities from emerging infectious diseases specifically were substantially under-estimated. The Government did project the significant disruptive impacts of pandemic flu. However, although this should have indicated the widespread disruption that could be caused by other infectious diseases, this connection seems to have failed to have been made.