Health bosses fear that the United Kingdom is less prepared for a new pandemic than before Covid-19 due to budget cuts.
Public Health England was disbanded in 2021 under then Health Secretary Matt Hancock to be replaced by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which became responsible for protecting the country from health emergencies.
But a report from the Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) found that almost half of the directors of public health asked (47 per cent) thought the recent changes would make the UK either much or slightly worse prepared for a pandemic.
The report’s author David Rowland, the director of the CHPI, said: “Thousands of those working flat out to fight the pandemic were transferred to new organisations, had to reapply for their jobs and the newly created UKHSA saw its budget reduced by a 60 per cent reduction in staff and a £12 billion reduction in funding in just over a year as the government wound down its response the pandemic.
“Recovering from such a large reorganisation will take time and may impact the UK’s ability to respond to any future health threats in the near future.”
The report found that half of health bosses were “not very” or “not at all” clear about who took decisions on public health at a national level after the change.
A government spokesman told The Times: “Our pandemic response plans are continuously updated to reflect the latest scientific information, lessons learned from exercises and our response to emergencies, including Covid, and are kept under constant review to ensure preparedness.
“The UK Health Security Agency was set up to combat future health threats and it continues to monitor the threat posed by Covid through surveillance systems and genomic capabilities, while also establishing the Centre for Pandemic Preparedness to ensure the UK is well equipped to respond to a future pandemic.
”He added that OHID’s model “was informed by extensive stakeholder engagement and we published a clear explanation of where former Public Health England functions moved when these reforms were first introduced”.
It came as the voices of some of those who suffered most in the pandemic are to be heard as the UK Covid-19 Inquiry officially begins its first day of evidence.
Two years after then-prime minister Boris Johnson announced a public inquiry would be set up, chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett will formally open the first substantive hearing on Tuesday.
Following her statement, a video featuring people from across the UK sharing their experiences of loss will be played to those gathered at the hearing centre in west London.
A statement from the inquiry team ahead of the opening warned that the film of “some of those who suffered most during the pandemic” may be “difficult to watch”.
The first module of the inquiry is expected to last around six weeks, during which there will be a focus on whether the pandemic was properly planned for and “whether the UK was adequately ready for that eventuality”.
Elkan Abrahamson, a solicitor representing the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice (CBFFJ) UK group, which has almost 7,000 members, said Tuesday “marks the end of a two-year battle by the bereaved to get a statutory public inquiry”.
He said: “As a nation, we have many lessons to learn from the pandemic and we must start to learn them now and avoid needless deaths.”
