Exercise Alice
Secret planning exercise in 2016 modelled impact of Mers outbreak in UK
Expert says Exercise Alice, one of 10 exercises disclosed under FoI, could have been relevant to Covid response
The government ran an exercise modelling the impact of a coronavirus outbreak four years before the Covid-19 outbreak but tried to keep it secret, the Guardian has learned.
The previously unpublicised Exercise Alice took place in 2016 involving officials from Public Health England (PHE) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), and envisioned an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), which is caused by a coronavirus.
It was one of 10 previously unpublicised pandemic planning exercises in the five years before Covid-19, now disclosed under freedom of information legislation. PHE had previously declined to reveal details of the exercises, citing the need to safeguard national security.
A leading virologist said Exercise Alice could have been “completely relevant” to the Covid response, which in the first weeks was shaped by flu pandemic plans. Separately, a senior government adviser on respiratory disease described it as “odd” that details of the exercises had not been provided to key advisory committees.
Last October when the health secretary, Matt Hancock, published a report on Exercise Cygnus, a 2016 flu pandemic scenario, he told parliament: “Exercise Cygnus was not designed to consider other potential pandemics, or to identify what action could be taken to prevent widespread transmission.”
Moosa Qureshi, a hospital consultant who obtained the information, said MPs should ask the health secretary why he “failed to disclose to parliament that the government has modelled multiple other pandemics, including a coronavirus”.
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Hancock faces cross-examination by MPs on Thursday who have already heard claims from the prime minister’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings that assurances he received that pandemic planning was up to date were “completely hollow
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/10/secret-planning-exercise-in-2016-modelled-impact-of-mers-outbreak-in-uk