Did Brexit making plans trump pandemic making plans?printed at 12:0412:04
Jim Reed
Well being reporterIn 2016 ministers performed a significant cross-government coaching workout, referred to as Workout Cygnus, to look how officers would reply to a scourge of latest influenza pandemic.It recognized worryingly massive gaps within the reaction and plans have been installed position to replace the ones through 2018.Nowadays’s file says that merely didn’t occur and through June 2020, simply 8 of the 22 suggestions made after that workout were finished.“Social care, particularly, were flagged persistently as a subject however had now not been addressed,” says the file.One explanation why it cites for this “inactivity” have been the competing calls for of “Operation Yellowhammer”, the United Kingdom authorities’s contingency making plans for a no-deal Brexit.It says the United Kingdom used to be reliant on preventing paintings on one doable emergency to pay attention to some other.However it additionally heard proof from politicians that Brexit making plans ended in a greater working out of provide chains, that means it would extra temporarily stockpile drugs within the pandemic. And the ones officers stated 15,000 additional workforce were recruited on account of Operation Yellowhammer, who may then be redeployed when Covid hit.
