The third part of Nafeez Ahmed’s investigation shows how public health was sacrificed to ideology as the lockdown was eased
Less than two weeks after social distancing restrictions were finally brought to help tackle the Coronavirus crisis, Boris Johnson’s Government tasked its Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) to figure out how rapidly they could be lifted.
The SAGE documents I have delved into confirm that the Government was warned by SAGE in no uncertain terms that, if lockdown restrictions were eased too early without a robust ‘Test, Trace and Isolate’ system in place, this would lead to a resurgence of the virus, with a high risk of new deaths.
Throughout May, SAGE was preoccupied almost entirely by the Government’s goal of lifting restrictions. Doing so was described as “desirable” from both a behavioural and “economic” perspective.
On 1 May, SAGE called for the establishment of a national test and trace programme, and urged the Government to benchmark it against “best international experience”, citing South Korea and Germany as prime examples.
But, those countries’ test and trace programmes had been established months earlier – as early as late January. The SAGE minutes confirm that it had taken the UK Government nearly five months to decide that it needed to adopt such a scheme, during which it had actually abandoned contact tracing even as others were increasing its use.
“The ability to test and release contacts is desirable from a behavioural (and economic) perspective,” the minutes read. “However, there is currently insufficient evidence as to how this could be done effectively.”
Wilful Blindness Over Track and Trace
In reality, there was no lack of evidence on testing and tracing. Plenty of it had long been available from other countries’ best practice strategies – the Government had simply failed to ask SAGE to obtain it.
The documents shows that the Foreign Office and Cabinet Office were only requested at this meeting to compare “international test and trace strategies” and that a paper would be produced for SAGE’s consideration by the end of the week.
The fact that this knowledge was not already available to the Government is astonishing. Nearly half a year into the pandemic, the Government had neglected the only approach with the potential to suppress the Coronavirus.
SAGE insisted that the Government should wait to allow infections to get to their lowest possible point before lifting restrictions – which it did not do.
SAGE’s new emphasis on testing was put to the Government repeatedly with vigour and urgency. The idea of “app-based tracing” was also touted and it is clear from the minutes that SAGE was being asked to take into account “modelling” to explore how a contact tracing app might work alongside manual tracing.
Notably, both the Prime Minister’s chief advisor Dominic Cummings and Cummings’ advisor Ben Warner were present at this meeting.
This is significant as the latter is the brother of Marc Warner, co-founding chief executive of Faculty AI. The previous month, Faculty had been contracted to build the Python interface for the Oxford University model that would underpin the design of the NHSX contact tracing app.
For the rest of the month, SAGE kept warning the Government that the drive to rapidly ease restrictions was fraught which tremendous risks that, if done without a proper national test and trace programme, would inevitably see a resurgence in the virus and new waves of death.
Despite this, the test and trace system the Government went on to establish was simply not fit for purpose – and restrictions were lifted anyway.
As early as 5 May, SAGE warned that a “more extensive relaxing of measures across a range of areas” is “highly likely to push R above one (high confidence)”. R is the ‘reproduction number’ and designates the number of people each newly infected individual is likely to infect in turn. SAGE also noted that “effective monitoring” at the “local level” is needed to “identify and respond to any outbreaks”.
Yet, as the June-July COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown in Leicester demonstrated, the Government has failed to build local guidelines, capacity and legislative authority for monitoring and rapid response at the local level.
SAGE Insists on Contact Tracing
Government officials who became regular fixtures at the SAGE discussions from 5 May onwards included Ben Warner and the Treasury’s Deputy Chief Economic Advisor Vanessa MacDougall.
MacDougall’s primary function is to advise the Government on how to improve economic growth and productivity. Her attendance at all the ensuing SAGE meetings ab