Recommendation 2

At the start of 2020, the UK had detailed strategies and plans to deal with a significant disease outbreak, but these were mainly focused on pandemic influenza—seen to be the highest-impact disease risk at that time. This was reflected in the dedicated strategy for tackling an influenza pandemic, the recurrent references to influenza in the actions of the 2017 Risk Register, and in the design of the largest biological security testing exercise that occurred over the last decade, ‘Exercise Cygnus’ (see Chapter 5). Nonetheless, in theory, the Government understood the need not to over-focus on a single disease in its preparations. It committed in 2018 to focusing on impacts rather than specific disease characteristics, to enable an effective response to new and emerging risks. It also referred to other contingency plans that it had developed to prepare for infectious diseases beyond influenza. (Paragraph 24) How prepared core capabilities were in the face of covid-19