Schools Locked Down Again in Secret Pandemic Drills
By Paul Nuki, Sarah Newey, Maeve Cullinan
Exclusive: Exercise Pegasus imagined a virus deadly to children spreading around the world from an island in southeast Asia
Schools across the UK were locked down this autumn as part of a state drill to tackle the threat of a new deadly virus.
Exercise Pegasus, which concluded last month and involved all major government departments, was the biggest pandemic simulation exercise the country has ever held.
Those participating in the drill were told a novel enterovirus had broken out on a fictional Island in southeast Asia before spreading across the world.
Unlike Covid-19, which disproportionately affected older age groups, the new virus was most lethal in the young. The virus, “EV-D68”, was said to cause respiratory failure, brain swelling and – in rare cases – paralysis in infants, children and teenagers.
The spread of the imagined virus resulted in travel restrictions, school and business closures and mask wearing in the UK and around the world.
Ministers involved in the drill also had to “wargame” dealing with fictional street protests over social distancing, the Telegraph understands.
News of the drill comes a week after the second module of the Covid Inquiry found the UK did “too little, too late” to contain and mitigate Covid-19 in the early part of 2020 and prevent a series of ruinous national lockdowns.
Closing schools “brought ordinary childhood to a halt” and the decision to shut them had a “profound consequence” on children, it said.
‘A realistic pandemic scenario’
Exercise Pegasus was designated a “Tier 1” national emergency exercise, meaning it involved ministerial participation, all devolved nations and activation of COBRA, the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms.
It ran in three parts in September, October and November this year and imagined a novel version of EV-D68 had triggered a pandemic.
It’s key purpose was “to simulate a realistic pandemic scenario, and is the first of its kind in nearly a decade,” according to a NHS briefing document.
The real EV-D68 is a respiratory virus first isolated in California in 1962, which has gained global traction. As well as respiratory disease and meningitis, it can cause a polio-like paralysis in children known as acute flaccid paralysis.
“The choice of an enterovirus is a good choice because it is a real possibility with real risks but is different from what we have seen before,” said Sir Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infections and Global Health at the University of Oxford and the Director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute.
“The big question for me would be, has anything really changed since Covid?” added Sir Peter, who was not involved in the exercise. “Have the systems changed and were the responses different?”
In Phase 1 of the Exercise Pegasus, participants were told an outbreak of a novel enterovirus had occurred on the fictional Island of “Musiyana” in southeast Asia and that it had already spread to Malaysia and Singapore.
The outbreak followed a local “food festival”, a child had died on 17 September and the virus was “considered to have pandemic potential”.
It is not clear if travel restrictions were recommended by UK ministers at this point in an attempt to prevent the virus getting to Britain, but the Telegraph understands a range of travel restrictions were in place by the end of the exercise.
In Phase 2 of the simulation, the World Health Organization (WHO) formally declared a pandemic, schools were closed and hospitals started to come under pressure. Protests over social distancing also broke out.
COBRA was told that, like Covid, the virus can be spread through respiratory aerosols and droplets and that “asymptomatic spread cannot be excluded”.
In Phase 3, a national lockdown was declared and non-essential businesses ordered to close. There were also fears that the virus – thought to be carried in pigs – could also cause food shortages if UK herds became infected.
The first part of the Covid Inquiry found the UK’s pandemic plan ahead of that outbreak was flawed in that it failed to consider preventing a novel virus sweeping across Britain in the first place.
“It focused on only one type of pandemic, failed adequately to consider prevention or proportionality of response, and paid insufficient attention to the economic and social consequences of pandemic response,” said the Inquiry.
“When it was said that the UK was well prepared before the Covid-19 pandemic, this meant at the time that the UK should have been able to manage the deaths of [837,500] people – not that it was prepared to prevent them,” it added.
It is not clear what measures ministers ordered during the Exercise Pegasus to try and prevent the virus getting to the UK, but the exercise was designed to test government decision making around “containment” as well as “mitigation”, say government documents.
Closing schools during the Covid-19 lockdowns “brought ordinary childhood to a halt,” the second part of the Covid Inquiry found. No plans had been made ahead of the pandemic that would have allowed for a quick switch to remote learning.
“The decisions to close schools and early years provision to most children and to implement a lockdown were steps taken to protect the adult population. They brought ordinary childhood to a halt,” concluded the Inquiry.
In Exercise Pegasus, the imagined virus was most lethal to children – presenting ministers with a different challenge around schools.
It is not clear what measures ministers ordered during the Exercise Pegasus to try and prevent the virus getting to the UK, but the exercise was designed to test government decision making around “containment” as well as “mitigation”, say government documents.
Closing schools during the Covid-19 lockdowns “brought ordinary childhood to a halt,” the second part of the Covid Inquiry found. No plans had been made ahead of the pandemic that would have allowed for a quick switch to remote learning.
“The decisions to close schools and early years provision to most children and to implement a lockdown were steps taken to protect the adult population. They brought ordinary childhood to a halt,” concluded the Inquiry.
In Exercise Pegasus, the imagined virus was most lethal to children – presenting ministers with a different challenge around schools.
Original source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/schools-locked-down-again-in-secret-pandemic-drills/