Throughout the current coronavirus pandemic, the UK government has faced criticism over its handling of the initial response to the health crisis. The country had battled reported chronic shortages of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in early 2020, while allowing people to arrive unscreened from COVID-19 hotspots, such as China and Italy.
The government of Boris Johnson has been accused of covering up a report compiled in 2016 that had alerted it to major shortcomings in its response to a potential pandemic, according to The Guardian.
A planning exercise by Public Health England commissioned in February 2016 and code-named Exercise Alice, had war-gamed a response to an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV), which, similar to COVID-19, results in potentially fatal respiratory illness and is able to spread asymptomatically.
The previously unpublished 23-page report pertaining to the health planning drill commissioned by Dame Sally Davies, then chief medical officer, was released on Thursday under freedom of information laws.
