UK decision not to suppress covid raises questions about medical and scientific advice
Five years on from the first UK-wide lockdown for covid-19, Anthony Costello asks why long term strategies of suppression continue to be under-recognised and calls for better governance of UK pandemic science advice Early in the covid pandemic, evidence emerged from several East Asian countries that suppression could lead to successful control. Yet the UK did not adopt the approach. Suppression aims to avoid national lockdowns and maintain economic activity for most of the population by introducing surveillance systems to bring new outbreaks under control quickly, thus reducing the reproductive rate of infection (R) to below 1 and causing the epidemic to wither. In May 2020, Jeremy Hunt, then chair of the health and social care select committee, criticised UK government advisers for failing to recommend a response focused on suppression of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from early in the pandemic, calling it “One of the biggest failures of scientific advice to ministers in our lifetimes.”1 Why w
