Gove:

"We’re going to move to get that up to 25,000 a day and we’re doing all that we can to increase and to accelerate that, and I hope that we will be able to test as many frontline workers at the earliest possible stage."

As pointed out by the person who copied this into the comments section under a Guardian report, it's just riddled with every caveat under the sun. "Going to, up to, all that we can, increase and accelerate, I hope that we will be able, as many....earliest possible stage..." You couldn't make it up, except that he did. Inept, unprepared, too little, too late.

UK strategy to address pandemic threat ‘not properly implemented’

[Damian Carrington in today's Guardian, extracts]:

The UK’s biological security strategy, published in 2018 to address the threat of pandemics, was not properly implemented, according to a former government chief scientific adviser.

Prof Sir Ian Boyd, who advised the environment department for seven years until last August and was involved in writing the strategy, said a lack of resources was to blame. Other experts said there was a gap between pandemic planning and action, and that the strategy had stalled.

The UK has been rated as one of the most prepared nations in the world, and some experts have said the coronavirus outbreak would have overwhelmed any government. However, a 2019 parliamentary inquiry into biological security was postponed and then cancelled because MPs were focused on Brexit and then the December general election.

Boyd said the government was aware of many risks with low likelihoods but potentially very high impacts on the nation, such as pandemics, severe storms and power blackouts. But he said these were assessed independently from one another, underplaying the total risk, which itself was rising due to climate change, population growth and the globalisation of travel.

Looked at alone, a pandemic had appeared unlikely, he said. “As a result, getting sufficient resource just to write a decent biosecurity strategy was tough. Getting resource to properly underpin implementation of what it said was impossible.”...

...The NHS is reported to have failed a government test of its ability to handle a pandemic, though the finding were not made public. Exercise Cygnus, a three-day dry run for a pandemic carried out in October 2016, examined how hospitals and other services would cope in a flu outbreak with a similar mortality rate to coronavirus.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, ministers were told three years ago that Britain would be overwhelmed, suffering a lack of critical care beds, morgue capacity and personal protective equipment.

In July 2019 the House of Commons joint committee on the national security strategy launched an inquiry into preparing for emerging infectious diseases. However, its first evidence session in October was postponed due to debates on Brexit and the calling of a general election. The December election meant the inquiry was cancelled.

Catherine Rhodes, the head of the centre for the study of existential risk at Cambridge University, had been scheduled to give evidence to the MPs’ inquiry. She said the UK had had fairly good pandemic planning in place.

“There does, however, seem to have been a significant gap between recognition of the risk and planning, and action on preparedness,” she said. “In particular, there could have been much better public communication in advance of the outbreak about the sort of measures that might be necessary in such a situation, and surge capacity in the NHS could have been substantially improved.”

Opi Outhwaite, at St Mary’s law school in London, who was also scheduled to give evidence to the inquiry, said: ‘I think broadly that any government would likely have been overwhelmed by this outbreak.”

But she said: “The risk of an outbreak of this type has been known for some time, while the biological security strategy seemed to have stalled."

Naturally, I have a message to convey about this government's ineptitude (not to speak of the running-down of the NHS), so I've been fairly selective. The article is there in full for anyone to read. There's a little bit of room in it for anyone to make little exonerations of the government. There is no room whatsoever for "it was in The Guardian therefore it's automatic shit" comments.