Owl thought that the “Torygraph” might be an interesting place to get an inside story of the testing fiasco.

By Edward Malnick, Sunday Political Editor www.telegraph.co.uk

Ministers and Whitehall officials insist they want to avoid a “blame game” for the UK’s apparently under-powered efforts to carry out mass coronavirus testing to date. But the remarks that follow such claims tend to involve implicit or explicit criticism of Public Health England, the quango responsible for protecting the nation from health emergencies, such as pandemics.

A recent, official survey of PHE’s own staff found that confidence in the organisation’s leadership was lacking from within as well. Less than half (49 per cent) of the body’s employees, 81 per cent of whom took part in the survey, said they had confidence in the decisions of senior managers.

In Downing Street too, confidence appears to have been lacking in recent weeks both in the Department of Health and PHE, with an acknowledgement that more should have been done earlier to roll out mass-testing, particularly of NHS staff unable to work because they or members of their household had displayed Covid-19 symptoms. One claim repeated inside and outside of Whitehall is that PHE has failed to capitalise on offers of help from the private and academic sectors, to help increase its capacity.

Tom Shinner, the highly-regarded official previously in charge of no-deal planning, was drafted back to No 10 a fortnight ago, having left Whitehall last year to become chief operating officer of Entrepeneur First, a technology investment firm. But the week in which public focus turned to testing coincided with Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, and Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, all physically isolated from each other and the rest of the government machine, and suffering, with varying degrees, from Covid-19 symptoms. Mr Johnson, who still has a temperature, and Mr Cummings, both remain in isolation as they attempt to shake off the virus, although Mr Johnson has continued to chair daily meetings on the issue.

Now, Lord Bethell, the former managing director of the Ministry of Sound nightclub, has been appointed as the de facto minister for testing in the Department of Health. While Mr Hancock named Prof John Newton, the director of health improvement at PHE, as the senior official who would steer through the new plan to reach 100,000 tests per day by the end of this month, Lord Bethell will have ministerial oversight.

Dedicated teams in the Department of Health will now, among other tasks, be responsible for involving industry and universities in the Government’s efforts to ramp up the number of tests taking place.

A growing number of experts see mass testing, together with the tracing of anyone who has come into contact with those who have tested positive, as key to helping the UK out of its impasse, where lifting the current restrictions on the population would almost certainly cause an upsurge in infections and overwhelm the NHS.

On Saturday, Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London professor upon whose modelling the Government has relied, said he was “hopeful” that some of the strict social distancing measures could be substituted with rapid access to testing and contact tracing in a few weeks’ time – once case numbers are lower.

A growing number of experts see mass testing as key to helping the UK out of its impasse Credit: PA

In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Prof Ferguson said that in January, when Covid-19 was discovered in the UK, “it wasn’t felt by PHE and others that we could ramp up testing fast enough for it to be an option then”.

When testing and contact tracing was rolled out the following month, it was focused on people returning from affected countries, rather than more widely across the population. An early detection policy, involving the isolation of all positive cases and those who have come into contact with patients, appears to have significantly helped to reduce the spread of Covid-19 in countries such as Singapore and South Korea, which learned lessons from the Sars outbreak in 2003.

In the UK, however, “we didn’t have the tests, as the epidemic took off, available to really roll it out on a national scale,” Prof Ferguson said.

Now, in early April, there not only remains a major shortfall in the the country’s capacity to test large sections of the population, but, as of Friday, only 5,000 of the health service’s 1.4 million staff had been tested, with many having to remain off work, without tests, because they live with family members or friends who have displayed symptoms in the last fortnight.

Some members of the cabinet are among those who are sceptical of Mr Hancock’s pledge to reach 100,000 tests by the end of this month. A previous announcement that the Government had purchased 3.5 million immunity home testing kits has so far failed to materialise, and there is a concern that ministers have previously rushed through major announcements without the evidence that they can be followed through.

On March 24, Mr Hancock said: “Of course it really matters for getting people back to work, so we have now bought 3.5 million antibody tests.

“That will allow people to see whether they have had the virus and are immune to it and then can get back to work.”

But on Thursday, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) conceded that the Government had not actually bought the tests but had put agreements in place to allow them to buy 3.5 million kits from a number of manufacturers, provided they receive official approval.

“We have not yet bought any tests but we do have contracts agreed subject to testing,” a DHSC spokesman said. “We have secured small numbers with potential to get much larger orders.”

Mr Hancock’s new five-point plan to ramp up testing to 100,000 per day includes both swab testing, to see which patients have the virus, and rolling out antibody tests which would establish whether individuals have already had and recovered from the disease.

Under the plan, PHE is “leading” on plans to increase the number of tests of inpatients and the most critical workers from 13,000 to 25,000 per day by mid-April, using eight of its labs and 44 across the NHS. But the Department of Health, under Mr Hancock and Lord Bethell, is leading work on all forms of testing as well as ensuring the involvement of private and academic bodies in testing and supplying equipment.

The set-up appears to leave significant room for inter-governmental blame to arise again if the 100,000 tests-a-day target fails to materialise by the end of this month. But one Whitehall source insisted that with the return of Mr Hancock and Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, following week-long home isolations, “it feels like the grown-ups are back”.

Exercise outside the home could be banned if people ignore coronavirus social distancing rules, the health secretary has warned. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52172035

Matt Hancock told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that the government would “take action” if needed to control the virus.

It comes after reports of groups of people gathering in parks during sunny weather this weekend.

Meanwhile, a further 555 people have died with the virus in England, 12 more in Wales and seven in Northern Ireland.

Mr Hancock said: “If you don’t want us to have to take the step to ban exercise of all forms outside of your own home, then you’ve got to follow the rules.”

The health secretary said the vast majority were sticking to the guidelines, adding: “Let’s not have a minority spoil it for everybody.”

This message is not helped by local maverick politicians: 

 Cllr Stuart Hughes, cabinet member for highways management DCC recently said enforcement has been removed from many parking places including coastal and tourist destinations. 

And EDDC revealed a couple of weeks ago that its all day parking for £2 will continue, following an agreement by council leader Councillor Ben Ingham and assets portfolio holder Cllr Geoff Pook. (In order to encourage people to spend all day wandering around the towns of Exmouth, Sidmouth, Honiton, Seaton, Axminster, Ottery and Budleigh.)

Can we all speak with one voice?

It turns out that there is a complex backstory to the science involved in “follow the science”.

It involves personality clashes (scientists are not immune) and perhaps the more important connection to perceived failures to control the Foot and Mouth epidemic in 2001 and Swine ‘flu in 2009. These involved members of the current team of scientists. Inquiries in both cases were conducted, concluding: 

“Modelling did not provide early answers,” it concluded. “The major difficulty with producing accurate models was the lack of a relatively accurate idea of the total number of cases . . . This is not to reject the use of models, but to understand their limitations: modellers are not ‘court astrologers’.”

The same failure to gather data in this pandemic is highly likely to be part of the public inquiry that must surely follow. The most vital data still missing is the proportion of people who have already been infected — a number that would instantly make the modelling far more reliable, including telling us when the lockdown might end.

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor  www.thetimes.co.uk 

The Royal Society is to create a network of disease modelling groups amid academic concern about the nation’s reliance on a single group of epidemiologists at Imperial College London whose predictions have dominated government policy, including the current lockdown.

It is to bring in modelling experts from fields as diverse as banking, astrophysics and the Met Office to build new mathematical representations of how the coronavirus epidemic is likely to spread across the UK — and how the lockdown can be ended.

The first public signs of academic tensions over Imperial’s domination of the debate came when Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University, published a paper suggesting that some of Imperial’s key assumptions could be wrong.

Her decision to publish highlighted academic rivalries between the epidemiology groups at Oxford and Imperial. These date back two decades to when Gupta, then a junior researcher at Oxford, lodged a complaint against her head of department, Professor Sir Roy Anderson, which saw him leaving the university. He is now professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial. Now other researchers have raised different concerns— saying Imperial’s modelling, while high quality, needs to be checked and replicated by others.

Mike Cates, who has succeeded Stephen Hawking as Lusasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge and is leading the Royal Society project, said his concerns were partly that the Imperial team, led by Professor Neil Ferguson, was overloaded with work, but also that its model was originally designed to tackle entirely different illnesses such as flu.

“The Imperial team are very good but these models were optimised for a different purpose which is influenza . . . everyone’s conscious of the fact that it has been rapidly converted from a different purpose and wasn’t originally designed for this type of virus and this type of transmission,” Cates said.

He added: “We need some alternative models because very big decisions are being made based on the [Imperial] models. And that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the Imperial model. It’s just that you can’t have one model, which has in it every possible different set of assumptions.

“With only the one model you don’t know which bits of it you really can trust, and which bits of it are less reliable — because the assumptions in it may have been made years before, in the context of a different disease.”

Such concerns echo those previously raised by Gupta. She said in an interview: “I decided to publish and speak out because the response to this pandemic is having a huge effect on the lives of vulnerable people with a profound cost and it seems irresponsible that we should proceed without considering alternative models. Imperial has a long history of involvement with government and its epidemiological models can have huge importance and translational impact but it’s tricky to use them to forecast what’s going to happen. We need to also consider alternatives.”

Her comments may hint at personal tensions among academic disease modellers, numbering just a few hundred people who know each other and have often worked together — or competed for jobs and grants.

In some cases there is a lot of history. In 1999 Gupta was coming to the end of a five-year fellowship in Oxford’s zoology department and applied for a permanent post, winning the approval of six of the eight-strong selection panel.

One of those who opposed her application was Anderson, her boss at the time. He alleged to other panel members that Gupta, who had worked alongside him for many years, had only got the job because she was having a relationship with another member of the panel. This was untrue and Gupta lodged an official complaint. Anderson sent her a formal letter of retraction and apology. He quit Oxford — moving to Imperial with a team that included Ferguson.

Later, the Wellcome Trust’s Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, one of Oxford’s most prestigious institutes, was quietly merged into the medical department.

Until those events Oxford had led the way in epidemiology. It was Anderson’s Oxford group, for example, which modelled the global spread of HIV in the 1980s — warning that it could claim millions of lives. “It was ridiculed by the public health community,” said Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh, who was once a member of Anderson’s Oxford group. “But the Oxford model was right. It showed how mathematical models of diseases can offer insights that public health experts cannot.”

Policy-makers took note. Woolhouse was also working with Anderson when mad cow disease spread from cattle into humans in the 1980s and 1990s and the government asked Oxford to help calculate the scale of the infection. This led to the cull of 4.4 million cattle, which suppressed the disease.

By the time foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) struck in 2001, however, Anderson’s clash with Gupta had seen him move to Imperial. Ferguson, who had once worked closely with Gupta at Oxford, including co-authoring papers with her, left her behind and also moved to Imperial. Oxford was in effect sidelined and it was from Imperial that Ferguson and Anderson dominated the government response to foot and mouth.

That response, involving the slaughter of more than 11 million sheep and cattle at a cost of more than £8bn was based entirely on modelling and remains hugely controversial — with many believing the modellers got it wrong. They were modelling a fast-moving epidemic with little accurate data. A subsequent government inquiry was damning of the general approach and its conclusions may be relevant to the current crisis. It said: “The FMD epidemic in UK in 2001 was the first situation in which models were developed in the ‘heat’ of an epidemic and used to guide control policy . . . analyses of the field data, suggest that the culling policy may not have been necessary to control the epidemic, as was suggested by the models produced within the first month of the epidemic. If so it must be concluded that the models supporting this decision were inherently invalid.”

The Imperial modellers’ next big public challenge came eight years later when swine flu swept the world — fortunately killing few Britons because older people tended to be immune and younger ones were strong enough to fight it off. Britain was, however, left with 34 million doses of unused and expensive vaccines. Again there was an inquiry — which concluded that ministers had once again treated modellers as “astrologers”, asking them to provide detailed forecasts when they had too little data.

“Modelling did not provide early answers,” it concluded. “The major difficulty with producing accurate models was the lack of a relatively accurate idea of the total number of cases . . . This is not to reject the use of models, but to understand their limitations: modellers are not ‘court astrologers’.”

The same failure to gather data in this pandemic is highly likely to be part of the public inquiry that must surely follow. The most vital data still missing is the proportion of people who have already been infected — a number that would instantly make the modelling far more reliable, including telling us when the lockdown might end.

“If we had been testing I still think we would have ended up in some form of lockdown,” Ferguson said, “but it might have been a shorter period of time and maybe slightly less intense.”

In the absence of government testing data the modellers can only make predictions hedged with a high degree of uncertainty.

A paper published last week from a group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, led by Nick Davies, warned that lifting the lockdown after 12 weeks would be followed by a surge of cases with between 220,000 and 370,000 extra deaths.

On the other hand, it suggested, imposing repeated lockdowns off and on for the rest of the year, could reduce the number of deaths to 130,000 and perhaps as low as 54,000. All the numbers are bad — but they are also incredibly wide-ranging.

Other modellers have drawn similarly dire conclusions. One of them is Osnat Zaretsky of DataClue, a company that has helped Israel, which has seen only 40 deaths so far, draw up a response. He believes Britain’s modellers have grossly underestimated the pandemic and predicts that Britain will see 95,000 deaths by May 1, rising to 288,000 by late June.

“The numbers are extremely alarming —they are doubling every couple of days and this is what our projections are based on,” said Zaretsky, a UK-born Israeli whose research suggests that the UK is not even counting deaths accurately. “There seems to be a vacuum of reliable information in the UK. It’s apparent that many sick people or even ones that passed away showed Covid-19 symptoms but have never been tested. This creates a false sense that the curve and the spread is far lower than they really are. As soon as the UK ramps up testing we’ll see a sharp increase in diagnosed cases.”

Owl has extracted this summary of the alternative views being voiced from a wider ranging article. 

As mentioned before, Owl thinks it might be wise to watch and see what happens in other nations, further down the path. (The USA will be an interesting wild-card to follow).

It  might be wise to wait until we get a fully functioning testing system which will be an essential prerequisite as well. With a novel virus, collecting real data is essential to validate the models being used and track what is happening when policies are implemented. The models are all based on a raft of assumptions, including herd immunity which assumes significant immunity will be gained from infection. 

Finally, the government might be wise to be prepared to be adaptable in the face of changing circumstances. 

Michael Savage  www.theguardian.com 

…….Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology and the director of the University College London genetics institute, said: “I personally, cannot see any viable alternative to ensuring immunity builds up in the population, through infection or vaccination. What is critical is to minimise hospital overload, to ensure mortality is kept as low as possible. There was a window of opportunity earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic, where it could have been controlled. We missed it, for various reasons, ranging from lack of preparedness to complacency. We should analyse our failings in the future, but now is not the time for blame.”

A No 10 spokesperson responded: “As set out by the prime minister, we are working to a scientifically-led, step-by-step action plan – taking the right measures at the right time.”

However, there is now an open debate in Whitehall and the scientific community about the best route out of the lockdown measures, which government advisers have suggested may need to be in place until the end of May.

Professor Martin Hibberd, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, pointed to successful strategies employed in other countries. These have involved very large-scale testing and as much contact tracing as possible, to identify people with the virus. “This strategy was difficult to achieve at the beginning of the outbreak, because of logistic problems in testing at such a large scale and our lack of experience at large scale contact tracing,” Hibberd added. “However, we should now be able to overcome these problems.”

Mark Woolhouse at Edinburgh University highlighted three key strategies for dealing with the epidemic. “Once lockdown has driven down the virus to low enough levels in the community we can go back to chasing down individual cases. At the same time we build more ICU capacity in the NHS so we can relax the lockdown without the health service being overwhelmed. And thirdly, we place new emphasis in shielding the vulnerable.”

By contrast, John Edmunds, also of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, argued that the only way to proceed was to continue with the lockdown policy for many months. “Testing on its own will not stop this epidemic,” he said. “If you want the NHS to cope then you will have to take extreme measures for a long time. There is no way out. We will have social distance for many months or hospitals will be overwhelmed. Mass testing, mass contact tracing and more technology are fine, but what we really need is a vaccine.”

The virus prevalence data used in this article has been collected by the Covid Symptom Tracker app (posted by Owl, on 26 March) which allows contributors to track their health. It is also being used by NHS staff to work out local infection rates.

This is an example of an inspired piece of lateral thinking – real science – collecting real data on how this unknown virus is spreading and putting it to use within weeks, rather than all the theorising being done by Public Health England – Owl

Rosamund Urwin and Tom Calver  www.thetimes.co.uk 

Britons who fled to their second homes at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic appear to have taken the virus with them.

Analysis by this newspaper has found that areas with high numbers of holiday homes, including the Lake District, Anglesey and the Cotswolds, now have above-average rates of the coronavirus infection.

People had been urged against travelling to second homes in case they spread the disease and put extra pressure on local hospital and ambulance services.

The virus prevalence data has been collected by the Covid Symptom Tracker app, which allows contributors to track their health. It is also being used by NHS staff to work out local infection rates.

About two million Britons are now using the app, most of whom are healthy. Researchers using this sample estimated that there are 1.9 million people in the UK aged between 20 and 69 who are infected with symptomatic Covid-19.

However, there is a risk that this overstates the extent of the disease, as those with symptoms are more likely to have downloaded the app.

South Lakeland, which includes much of the Lake District, has an infection rate of between 5% and 6%, according to the app. There are 3,866 second homes in the area, about 7% of dwellings, according to data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Between 5% and 6% of people on Anglesey, the island off the northwest coast of Wales, and in the Cotswolds are also now infected, according to the app. There are 2,112 second homes in Anglesey, about 7% of residences, and 1,714 second homes in the Cotswolds, about 4% of the total residences.

Professor Tim Spector, the lead researcher for the app, added that there are signs of this trend in other areas too. “It looks like the coasts are more infected than the inner parts of the UK down in Cornwall and Devon — that may be the Londoners’ second home part,” he said.

Nationally, about 4.9% of app users reported symptoms. However, this average is skewed by cities such as London, Glasgow and Birmingham which have become hotspots of the virus.

Both the police and councils have repeatedly told second home owners to stay away. Dafydd Llywelyn, the Plaid Cymru police and crime commissioner for Dyfed Powys, last month described the Covid-19 pandemic as a “national emergency, not a national holiday” and called for travel to a non-primary residence to be banned.

The app was developed by a team at King’s College London in association with the start-up Zoe Global, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre.

The most commonly reported symptoms include fatigue, described by half of sufferers, and chest pain, a cough and shortness of breath, which were all recorded by more than a quarter of ill respondents. About a fifth reported a hoarse voice and the loss of taste and smell.

“Small wonder, then, that while ministers have been on a loop promising to “ramp up” testing, those tasked with making that happen have been tripping over their feet. Note the government’s own animal health agency, which says it could have been running 40,000 human tests a week and has been eager to help, but couldn’t get a straight answer out of Public Health England (PHE). First in touch with PHE back in January, its capacity still remains untapped.”

• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist www.theguardian.com

Boris Johnson and his government are on probation, watched by a public whose mood could turn rapidly and brutally. For now, and on paper, Johnson has the people with him: his poll ratings have surged north of 50%, a feat last managed by a Tory government at the height of the Falklands war nearly 40 years ago. But the wisest heads in Downing Street will not be turned by those numbers. They know that there’s always a “rally around the flag” effect at moments of extreme crisis: when citizens are frightened, they want to believe their leaders have got things under control. That’s why incumbents around the world, even useless and immoral ones such as Donald Trump, have enjoyed an initial corona bounce in their ratings, almost regardless of their actions. At the start of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 Jimmy Carter saw his approval numbers leap from 32% to 61% – only for him to crash to defeat a year later. Johnson will know that one day, and perhaps quite soon, he, too, will be judged.

He can point to some concrete achievements. The opening today of what is a giant field hospital in east London’s ExCeL centre, constructed within nine days, is the prime example. Those who drooled with totalitarian envy at China’s ability to throw up a hospital in Wuhan within a week were adamant that a western democracy like Britain could never match that accomplishment, and they have been proved wrong. Rishi Sunak’s promise that the state will pay 80% of workers’ wages has won plaudits around the world, even if the chancellor has had to return repeatedly to his economic rescue package, tweaking it to catch those groups he left behind first time around. And the government has imposed a national lockdown that has been largely observed, one that might even see a flattening of the infection curve in the next week or so.

All that, though, has to be set against a record that does not inspire confidence, but saps it. It consists of a series of decisions that, for now, the British public has been prepared to forgive, granting its leaders the benefit of the doubt, but which it may eventually find indefensible. Their combined effect can be seen in a single image, a graph with the power to terrify. It shows that the UK death toll is currently higher than Italy’s at the same stage, reinforced by another showing that by this stage of the outbreak Italy had begun to flatten its curve while in Britain the line keeps rising, the number of deaths doubling every three days.

Start with Johnson’s initial reaction to this menace. Recall the smirking insouciance with which he boasted that he continued to shake hands, even when he met people he knew to be infected with the virus. If Britain emerges from this crisis with a higher death rate than comparable countries, that is a Johnson moment that will come to haunt him.

That complacency was formalised in the government’s flirtation with the notion of herd immunity, an approach that some ministers still try to deny was ever policy but which was spelled out explicitly by the chief scientific adviser as recently as 13 March. To be sure, Johnson U-turned on that, ditching mitigation for all-out suppression when he announced the national lockdown 10 days later, prompted in part by seeing Italy engulfed by the virus. But Britons might not wait for the inevitable public inquiry to wonder at the time lost chasing what proved to be a fantasy and to ask how those precious days might have been used instead to prepare for what was coming.

For that time could have been devoted to testing, the failing on which this government is likely to be judged most harshly. On Thursday, health secretary Matt Hancock sought to offer an explanation for why Britain so conspicuously lags behind the likes of Germany in this area: Britain does not have the diagnostic industry the Germans have built up over 70 years, he said. But that cannot excuse what has been a litany of mixed messages, crossed wires and broken promises.

Even now, there remains confusion about whether the government accepts the centrality of testing to combating this threat. It was not three weeks ago that the head of the World Health Organization made the case in words of one syllable. The way to fight Covid-19 was “test, test, test”. Yet a matter of hours before Hancock spoke, and even as the prime minister was calling testing the key that would “unlock the coronavirus puzzle,” the deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, was on TV arguing that testing was “a bit of a side issue,” compared with slowing the rate of new infections via physical distancing.

Small wonder, then, that while ministers have been on a loop promising to “ramp up” testing, those tasked with making that happen have been tripping over their feet. Note the government’s own animal health agency, which says it could have been running 40,000 human tests a week and has been eager to help, but couldn’t get a straight answer out of Public Health England (PHE). First in touch with PHE back in January, its capacity still remains untapped.

That seems to fit with reports that PHE has been too controlling and centralising, standing in the way of the Dunkirk effort urged by Nobel prize-winning scientist Sir Paul Nurse, in which hundreds of the UK’s smaller labs would play the role of 1940’s little boats, doing their bit to test, test, test. There has been confusion – ministers say there’s a shortage of key chemicals called “reagents”, the chemical industry says there’s no shortage – and there has been failure, best captured by the sight of those much-vaunted drive-through testing facilities, in Chessington, North Greenwich or Wembley, standing unused and echoingly empty. Note too the baffling decision that only 15% of NHS staff could be tested, a limit that was lifted this week.

When the time comes, the government might try to blame the civil servants and the bureaucrats and, no doubt, there will be plenty of blame to go around. But the government has power – more of it now than at any time since the war – and its duty was to bend the bureaucracy to its will. Hancock wants to convey that he’s doing that, promising 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month. But even if meeting that target proves possible, and details are scant, it could come too late, given that those same ministers are warning that the tidal wave will be crashing on our shores very soon.

Sadly, the failings on testing do not stand alone. There has been the scandalous failure to equip doctors and nurses with the protective kit they need. When hospitals are turning to suppliers of medical fetish gear for essential masks and scrubs, you know something has gone badly wrong. The same can be said of watching a Trump administration official mock the UK for having so few ventilators, or of the evidence that our government chose to stand aside from a Europe-wide effort to source those life-saving machines, apparently because to take part would smack of betraying Brexit.

For now, the British public are being patient, but their patience will not be infinite. Hancock will have to make good on that promise of 100,000 tests by the end of this month; the curve will have to flatten. At stake over the next four weeks will be the lives of many citizens of this nation – and the life of this government.

A new NHS Nightingale hospital is being set up at Exeter’s Westpoint Arena to treat COVID-19 patients from across Devon and Cornwall, Devon Live understands.

Colleen Smith  www.devonlive.com

It is believed work is ongoing at Westpoint Arena, on the outskirts of Exeter near Clyst St Mary, ahead of an official announcement.

It is understood that work has begun on the Devon and Cornwall NHS Nightingale hospital which will have around 400 beds.

Westpoint – the site for the annual Devon County Show – is the largest exhibition and entertainment venue in the South West with an indoor venue for up to 7,500 people. It is located near Exeter Airport.

It is not yet known if the area will include a temporary morgue similar to the one recently set up in Kingskerswell.

The NHS last night confirmed that new Nightingale hospitals are being built in Bristol and Harrogate. The Government say NHS Hospitals across the country have already freed up more than 33,000 beds, the equivalent of 50 new hospitals, and there are 8,000 extra beds in the private sector.

But the Nightingales are on standby in case these are not enough to cope.

The military helped to set up London’s Nightingale hospital, which so far has 500 beds in place with space for another 3,500.

Staff from across the NHS will be working there, including student nurses, medical students who have started work early and former doctors, nurses and other staff who have come out of retirement.

Similar hospitals are also due to open at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre and Manchester’s Central Complex.

A 4,000-bed facility is being opened at London’s ExCel centre. In Bristol, 1,000 beds will be available at the University of the West of England…….

A nearby hotel – the Hampton by Hilton at Exeter Airport – has been converted to accommodate discharged hospital patients awaiting care home placements.

The hotel was closed on Tuesday March 24 following the lockdown to reduce the spread of Covid-19.

Devon County Council confirmed the hotel is being utilised to help ease the pressure on local hospitals and care homes who are attempting to cope with an increase in demand on its services.

It’s like watching a slow motion car crash, except we are passengers in the car – Owl

Three weeks ago, the World Health Organization told countries battling Covid-19 to “test, test, test” for the virus. Since then, the UK government has been accused of issuing mixed messages, of over-promising and under-delivering – the UK’s daily testing rate has only just passed 10,000.

Pamela Duncan  www.theguardian.com

11 March: Tests to be expanded

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, insists the government is “rolling out a big expansion of testing” but declines to give a specific timetable. NHS England says there are plans to increase coronavirus testing to 10,000. The UK-wide death toll stands at eight – 1,215 people have been tested for coronavirus in the UK.

12 March: Tests to be restricted

The UK moves from the “contain” to the “delay” phase of its plan to tackle coronavirus. Boris Johnson announces that health workers will no longer test people for the virus in their homes, but will continue to test people already in hospitals.

16 March: WHO says ‘test, test, test’

The WHO urges countries to “test, test, test”. 3,826 people have been tested for coronavirus in the UK.

18 March: ‘Test 25,000 a day’ – but no timetable

Boris Johnson announces the ambition of carrying out 25,000 tests a day, but provides no detail. 5,779 tests are carried out that day.

19 March: ‘Antibody tests coming soon’ – but no timetable

The prime minister says mass testing to see if people have already contracted the virus, and are probably therefore immune, will take place relatively soon, which he says would be a game-changer. The UK death toll from coronavirus stands at 144.

24 March: ‘UK has 3.5m antibody tests’ – but no timetable

Matt Hancock announces the government has bought 3.5m antibody tests, which can determine if someone has had coronavirus. He repeats that general testing will be ramped up, but with no timeframe for deployment. 6,491 tests are performed.

25 March: ‘UK aiming for 250,000 tests a day’ – but no timetable

Johnson tells the daily Downing Street press conference: “We are going up from 5,000 to 10,000 tests per day, to 25,000, hopefully very soon up to 250,000 per day.” 6,583 tests are carried out.

25 March: ‘Antibody tests within days’ – then denied

Earlier that day, Prof Sharon Peacock, the director of the national infection service at PHE, says mass antibody testing in the UK will be possible within days. The government later takes a more cautious line, saying the tests will not be available so quickly.

27 March: ‘Dramatic increase planned’ – but no timetable

Michael Gove announces that a “new alliance” of businesses, research institutes and universities will boost antigen testing capacity (which checks if someone has the virus) for frontline workers. He says hundreds of people will receive the tests over the weekend and that there will be a “dramatic” increase in testing the following week.

31 March: ‘Testing hampered by chemical shortage’

Only 8,240 people are tested on this day. Gove says the availability of certain chemicals is limiting the ability to rapidly increase testing capacity.

1 April – Ministers admit only 0.4% of NHS staff have been tested

Despite its 27 March announcement, Downing Street confirms that only 2,000 people out of 500,000 frontline NHS England workers had been tested for coronavirus so far. Public Health England’s Prof Yvonne Doyle appears to confirm that the UK’s strategy is now to increase testing for the virus in the general population. A total of 9,793 tests are carried out.

2 April: Government sets new target – and admits 3.5m antibody tests don’t work

Testing passes 10,000 a day for the first time since the start of the crisis, with 10,215 carried out. Hancock sets a new government target of 100,000 tests a day by the end of April – including both antibody and antigen tests. He says the UK wants to buy 17.5m antibody tests, “subject to them working”, and that early tests had been “poor”. None of the 3.5m tests bought by the government – and announced on 24 March – have been found to work so far.

3 April: 100,000 target clarified

Hancock tells broadcasters that the prime minister’s 25 March commitment to get to 250,000 tests a day “still stands”, but that he wanted to “put a very clear timeline” on the goal to get to 100,000 by the end of the month. He says it is “frustrating” that the first antibody tests have not worked. The prime minister’s spokesman is forced to clarify that the 100,000 target is for England only.

The historic claim is that it will “all be over by Christmas” – have we heard that one yet? – Owl

Kate Proctor  www.theguardian.com

The health secretary urgently sought to play down his suggestion that the peak number of deaths caused by coronavirus could fall as early as Easter Sunday – claiming his remarks had been “over interpreted”.

Matt Hancock began his media appearances on Friday by saying it was “perfectly possible” the peak of the disease could arrive in nine days’ time.

His comment led to confusion hours later at the daily Downing Street press conference as the government’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, asked when the epidemic was expected to peak, said: “We don’t know the answer to that yet.”

Van-Tam said it was “too soon to say” when the peak would hit, appearing to contradict the health secretary.

“It will partly depend upon how well those social distancing measures are adhered to by every one of us,” he said. “I hope it will be soon. We’re going to watch very carefully to see when we’ve hit the peak and when we’re starting to turn it, but we will not take any premature actions.”

Easter Sunday falls on 12 April this year, and Hancock had earlier said he would not steer people away from anticipating that date as the peak in the number of fatalities in the UK, though there was still uncertainty around it.

He clarified his remarks during the Downing Street press conference on Friday evening after being asked again by Sky News when he thought the peak would fall. “The truth is that we don’t know,” he said.

He claimed his remarks had been over interpreted and he had been clear that the government could not give a definitive answer in his earlier interviews.

He said: “Actually, there’s a reason we don’t know, and that’s because it depends on how people act, and this is why the absolute central message, the most important message that anybody can take away from this press conference or the entirety of the government’s messaging and how we feel, is that you’ve got to stay at home.”

The first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, said Hancock’s 12 April suggestion did not feel accurate considering the evidence she had assessed. She said: “I want to be very clear that nothing I have seen gives me any basis whatsoever for predicting the virus will peak as early as a week’s time here in Scotland.”

Her chief medical officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood, stressed: “I have not been able to find that the peak will be as soon as we’re hearing in the media today. Now is not the time to think that perhaps it will all be over soon.”

Several government ministers have come under fire for giving mixed messages to the public, including the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, who incorrectly said people should only go shopping for food once a week, which was later corrected by No 10.

Michael Gove also stepped in to explain that daily exercise should be a walk or run close to home after people had interpreted the government’s rule as allowing them to travel further afield.

The prime minister has also been criticised for talking about plans for up to 250,000 tests a day. The health secretary confirmed the immediate aim was 100,000 tests a day by the end of April.

I am angry.

I am angry that NHS Nightingale will come too late. Intensive care units are becoming overloaded across the London region.

Anonymous • The writer is an NHS respiratory consultant who works across a number of hospitals

www.theguardian.com 

Our own is now ventilating almost three times the number it was designed for, spilling out across adjacent wards and operating theatres on scavenged ventilators and skeleton staffing.

Still the tide keeps coming. We are keeping sicker and sicker patients on the wards just because there is no capacity to ventilate them.

We are becoming stricter and stricter about who we are able to offer ventilation to; soon many of our own staff would not meet the criteria.

These conversations become harder and having them so many times per day is exhausting. The Nightingale is opening at least one week too late.

The upcoming weekend terrifies me.

I am angry that for the last week I have almost certainly had Covid-19 myself. I am lucky, of course, but because we have hardly any testing for staff and I did not have a fever or continuous cough, I was cleared as safe to continue working without a test. Who knows whether I was safe or not?

The tiredness has been crippling and I have crawled straight into bed after 14 hour days. I am feeling a bit better now but have profound anosmia that has robbed me of any ability to taste my food. But at least I am OK.

I am angry that so many of my colleagues are sick.

Some departments, my own included, have over half our staff off. We have – apart from a few exceptions – not run out of protective equipment, but it doesn’t seem to matter. People are sickening anyway. My worry is that some will get seriously ill, and some will die. Some already have.

In a callous, brutal way, I can only hope they are not people I know. I don’t think I could stomach that.

I am angry that we have had to go cap in hand to larger partners, in effect begging for equity in staffing.

Most teaching hospitals have an army of university-affiliated doctors doing research, or super-specialist clinics, or complex surgeries, and each have pulled these doctors into their own hospitals now that these activities have been cancelled.

This includes hospitals without emergency departments, which fully staff empty wards until they receive patients referred on a case-by-case basis from other hospitals.

Contrast this with a smaller hospital, already full before the crisis began, with no pool of additional resource to call on for a sudden unexpected shift to 24/7 working. There have been direct refusals to share staff and the unfairness takes my breath away.

Surely the only sensible answer is to convene a regional panel to fairly allocate staffing between hospitals based on need; once again the lack of high-level leadership lets us down.

I am angry that I cannot switch off. At home, at work, in the car, this is all there is now. Everything else seems trivial, monochrome, unimportant by comparison.

To my shame this has started to include me and my family. How can I care about my kids’ birthdays or my parents’ loneliness when people are dying unnecessarily?

How do I enjoy a day off at home when I’m still expected to dial in to two, three calls and there are constant WhatsApp messages and emails for advice and urgent decisions? I worry how long I can sustain this for.

Most of all, though, I am angry that despite all of our preparations we will be overwhelmed through no fault of our own. We prepared well. We were responsive, organised, calm, ready. What we have achieved already is truly remarkable. Now, though, we will just be yet another hospital with patients being treated in corridors, exhausted staff, insufficient ventilators and people dying because we can’t treat them properly.

Despite the fact that we don’t yet have the Covid-19 epidemic under control (we may just about have a more or less constant, but not yet a reducing, infection rate).  Debate has started on exit strategies and herd immunity.

Owl thinks it might be wise to watch and see what happens in other nations, further down the path. It also might be wise to wait until we get a fully functioning testing system which will be an essential prerequisite.

However, here is some interesting historical research.

Tom Whipple, Science Editor  www.thetimes.co.uk 

Seattle could see the pandemic coming as, to the east, town after town fell. When Spanish flu at last hit the Pacific coast the city was ready. Theatres, saloons, churches and schools were shuttered for five months.

In Saint Paul, Minnesota, the response was different. Worried, perhaps, about the economic effects, the town dithered and reopened after a month. Years later, as Seattle boomed, its economy was still suffering.

Economists believe that the 1918 flu pandemic could offer us a parable. For those countries weighing up the economic cost of intervention versus the lives saved, it is part of growing evidence that suggests the two are not mutually exclusive.

The study, by researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, compared the severity of measures taken a century ago by 43 cities and the subsequent recovery. Their analysis of employment, manufacturing and bank losses implied that the economic costs alone of stopping a pandemic might be less then those of not stopping it.

Although the work has a caveat that Spanish flu had a higher death toll than coronavirus, and killed more people of working age, it is just one of a number of similar analyses being brought out to help governments.

Economists at Chicago University have used standard measures of the monetary value of a life to conclude that, assuming models of the pandemic were correct, the cost in US deaths of not stopping it would be equivalent to $8 trillion, or $60,000 per household.

Anna Scherbina, of Brandeis University in the US, has considered other trade-offs in an unchecked pandemic, factoring in medical costs and days of work lost to illness. With a total estimated bill equivalent to 43 per cent of US GDP, she concluded that it would be some time before the cure was worse than the illness.

The lessons should be an encouragement to governments to hold firm, she said, at least for now. “The economic costs of a lockdown are immediate and clearly visible to all, in a form of shuttered businesses, lower paychecks, lost jobs, etc,” she said. The benefits of a lockdown, however, are “not as obvious to the public”. According to her model, however, she calculated those benefits would run out and it would not be economically advantageous to maintain a lockdown until a vaccine was found.

Jonathan Portes, of King’s College, London, said that the uncertainties in what we know about the virus makes it hard for policymakers. While there is agreement on the economic merits of the present response, the same is not true in the longer term.

“Right now, there’s no trade-off between health and wealth,” he said. “Later, however, when the initial pandemic is firmly under control and we are thinking about how and when to lift restrictions, we may face difficult decisions on how to balance health risks and restarting the economy.”

Ultimately, said Julia Steinberger, from Leeds University, what matters may not be money, but how the money is directed. Last week a paper was published arguing that a long-term economic contraction of more than 6.4 per cent would cause more cumulative loss of life than the virus itself.

She has recently published research, however, suggesting that the GDP of a nation and its life expectancy is not so closely linked. Instead, she argues, the correlation between the two is our choice.

“A lot of things matter in the economy that are not measured in GDP,” Ms Steinberger said. “The UK has a highly-educated workforce, physical infrastructure, technology. All these things don’t leave the country just because GDP is going down.”

To get through this crisis, she said, “we need to protect essentials — basic goods like food, transport, housing. We need to keep focused on what we can do for each other.”

NHS and care workers have gripped public attention as the country responds to the Covid-19 pandemic. But the one million people who work in local government have also been working flat-out – work that will continue well past the present crisis, that has been made much harder by 10 years of austerity, and that is not being helped by some parts of Whitehall trying to micromanage the local response, writes:

Richard Vize, a public policy commentator and analyst www.theguardian.com 

As councils cope with a huge wave of demand on every front, from social care to refuse collection, they are taking daily instructions from ministers and officials across Whitehall, themselves under pressure and struggling to keep pace with directions from Downing Street.

Ironically perhaps after years of cuts, the tensions aren’t about money, but about communication and coordination. There have been delays, confusion and aborted work, such as changes of policy about whether central or local government is managing the assembly and distribution of food parcels, and local preparations for additional mortuary capacity being put on hold in favour of a national response.

While some difficulties are inevitable, the fundamental problem is ministers persisting in the fantasy that everything works best when it is run from the centre.

Limited understanding about the practicalities of local delivery has affected everything from identifying which vulnerable people need help to supporting local businesses.

In some places food parcels have arrived stuffed with biscuits and chocolate, which then need to be supplemented with something nutritious.

Meanwhile, public health directors are frustrated at being excluded from key communications and the development of guidance by NHS England and government departments.

Responsibility for commissioning public health policies was moved out of central government in 2013. As former public health director Gabriel Scally said earlier this week, public health budgets have since been systematically raided in the face of massive cuts to council funding. The heart of the local response to the virus now lies with a small number of council public health specialists – about 500 across England.

As the first wave of infections hit, these specialists played a crucial role in the containment phase, chasing infection contacts and coordinating the local response.

Among a torrent of other responsibilities, highlighted via the hashtag #adayinthelifeofadph, local public health staff are collating and analysing data, giving advice on everything from protection equipment to homelessness, managing the implementation of social distancing, supporting vulnerable people, and working with the NHS, voluntary groups and government.

All councils depend on these specialists to help implement the blizzard of guidance on infection control and safe working, as they work with GPs, volunteers, community groups, local businesses and government during the lockdown.

Those who may need help are being identified from numerous sources, including responses to a government letter asking 1.5 million people judged at risk if they need help. Many people have contacted councils directly. Staff and voluntary workers – all trained in infection control – are making personal visits and keep in touch online and by phone, as well as delivering food and medicines and checking on social care and other welfare needs. Some support will come from the £500m government hardship fund.

Two weeks ago the NHS and the government instituted a new patient discharge regime, which amounted to an order to do whatever it takes to clear patients out of 15,000 beds. Councils are working with the NHS, care homes and voluntary groups to ensure residents being moved out of hospitals have somewhere to go and have the right support in place.

The government has allocated councils in England £1.6bn of additional funds to cope with Covid-19 pressures, such as buying support from care providers, but the guidance did not mandate the testing of patients before discharge, leading some care homes, such as in Liverpool, to refuse to take them. Continuing difficulties in getting personal protection equipment (PPE) to care staff are also hindering discharges, and infections in care homes will put a huge additional strain on adult social care.

Social care staff continue to go to people’s homes despite the lack of PPE. The British Association of Social Workers has warned (pdf) that staff are often seeing a dozen or more service users a day without even hand sanitiser as protection. Social workers are also scrambling to keep in touch with children who may be put at additional risk by the lockdown.

Councils and their contractors are trying to keep other vital services running, particularly refuse collections, knowing that any deterioration in the environment will exacerbate people’s sense of fear. It’s a growing problem. Some council recycling centres have closed and the volume of waste is increasing just as sickness among refuse crews increases.

Huge efforts have been made to get rough sleepers off the streets, including working with volunteers and businesses to get people into hotels and revamp empty properties. And councils are gearing up to help an expected surge in domestic abuse victims.

Local authorities also have to handle the emotionally-charged practicalities around funerals. Guidance from Public Health England now says only immediate family are allowed to attend and social distancing rules must be maintained.

Some families are waiting to remove bodies from hospital mortuaries in the hope that the rules might be relaxed in a few weeks, while many undertakers are not working as normal. As a result, mortuary capacity is rapidly running out, and emergency facilities are being built.

Under intense pressure, local government’s role has been a mix of community leadership, implementing national plans in ways that are sensitive to local needs, and providing support for everyone from rough sleepers to businesses.

When the immediate crisis is over, councils need to ram home the message that while national guidance has often been essential in fighting Covid-19, local government is at its best when it has maximum freedom to meet local needs. When the plaudits are being handed out, councils will deserve huge credit for the energy and innovation they have brought to leading their communities.

When the chips are down Devon County, Plymouth and Torbay sideline HotSW LEP (Heart of the South West local enterprise partnership – our supposed devolution body). They don’t even mention the newly formed body, the Great South West headed by Steve Hindley, Chairman of construction group MIDAS.

Takes a crisis to concentrate minds.

BBC Devon website: 

As many as 123,000 jobs in Devon could be lost as a result of the coronavirus crisis, a new report has indicated.

Commissioned by Devon, Plymouth and Torbay councils, the Covid-19 Economic Resilience report also predicted a potential loss to the economy of nearly £2bn.

It was commissioned by the three three local authorities following a request from the government’s Local Economies Advisory Panel.

They have jointly called on the government to provide more financial assistance to the county, after they created and presented the report to the panel.

The combined impact of job losses in the air industry, hospitality, food and drink, and retail sectors have contributed to the panel giving Devon’s economy a “red rating”.

Disruption to the construction, manufacturing, marine and fishing industries are also being reported as orders fail to materialise, while Jobcentres are reporting an average rise of six times the number of claimants, the report said.

We want local businesses to know that we are in their corner, fighting for them, and we’re urging the government to get behind us.

John Hart

Devon County Council Leader

Owl posts two articles under this heading. The first is a general one on how the democratic process can continue safely, the second is the advice from Civic Voice to amenity societies on how this might affect planning. 

Daniel Clark  www.devonlive.com

New laws that enable local authorities in England to hold public meetings virtually by using video or telephone conferencing technology come into effect from Saturday.

The government has temporarily removed the legal requirement for local authorities to hold public meetings in person during the coronavirus pandemic.

This will enable councils to make effective and transparent decisions on the delivery of services for residents and ensure that local democracy continues to thrive.

The change applies to all local authorities in England and covers all categories of public meetings including annual meetings, cabinet and committee meetings.

It means all councils – from Devon County down to the parish councils – can continue to meet, and also applies to the Dartmoor and Exmoor National Park Authorities, the Devon and Somerset Fire Authority, as well as the Police and Crime Panel,

All meetings must still be made accessible for the public and the press to ‘attend’, but it will be up to each local authority to decide how they conduct meetings, how voting procedures work and how to ensure that the public has access.

Existing rules about the number of councillors or members of a group required to attend to make a meeting valid will remain, but virtual attendance will count.

The Regulations apply to meetings taking place before May 7, 2021, but this date could be moved forward if medical and scientific advice leads to the relaxation of social distancing rules.

Devon County Council’s cabinet are set to meet on Wednesday, April 8, via videolink. The Exeter City Council executive meeting the night beforehand is currently still listed as taking place in the Civic Centre as usual.

Local Government Secretary Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP said: “Local authorities are the backbone of our democracy and they are playing a vital role in the national effort to keep people safe. This change will support them to do that while maintaining the transparency we expect in local decision making.

“Councillors and staff are already doing the right thing by following our advice to stay home, protect the NHS and save lives. This includes working from home wherever possible, and the new powers to hold meetings virtually will make that easier.

“It’s critical that they continue to provide essential services and find innovative ways to maintain important economic functions they perform like the planning system and they will now be able to do so.

“We’ve given local authorities across England an additional £1.6 billion to help their crucial work in the national effort against coronavirus, and we are continuing to ensure they get all of the support that they need at this time.”

Local Government Association Chairman, Cllr James Jamieson added: “Councils are working tirelessly to support their communities as they rise to the unprecedented challenge of the coronavirus crisis.

“Giving councils powers to hold meetings remotely is important to maintaining local democracy and allowing critical decisions to be made during this public health crisis. Councils need to respond quickly and make very many key decisions. They can now do so while remaining open, transparent and accessible to the public.

“Remote council meetings will crucially help ensure all those taking part stay at home, helping to prevent the coronavirus from spreading and save lives.”

The government is also working to bring in new law so that by-elections, local polls and referendums cannot be held before 6 May 2021.

The Coronavirus Act 2020 has already postponed local and Police and Crime Commissioner elections scheduled in the UK for Thursday 7 May 2020 until 6 May 2021.

Here is what Civic Voice have to say on how this might affect planning and advice to amenity societies

civicvoiceblog.wordpress.com 

Local authorities in England handed new powers to hold planning meetings virtually by using video or telephone conferencing technology from April 4th

We understand that some civic societies and community groups are concerned about the implications of COVID19 and how this will impact the planning system in regard to Local Authorities processing planning applications.

In the same way that civic societies are saying that they are experiencing challenges in meeting face-to-face, we should not be surprised that this is also the case for councils.

So what is being done about this?

The government has temporarily removed the legal requirement for local authorities to hold public meetings in person during the coronavirus pandemic. This will enable councils to continue to make decisions during the current crisis.

Section 78 of the Coronavirus Act 2020 allows the relevant national authority to make regulations providing for virtual meetings in local authorities, including the Greater London Authority, district, county and unitary councils, parish councils and national park authorities.

The Regulations apply to meetings held, or required to be held, before 7th May 2021.

Does this affect Planning Committee Meetings?

The change applies to all local authorities in England and covers all categories of public meetings including annual meetings, cabinet and committee meetings.

Anticipating the impact of the current emergency on the planning system, the Chief Planner’s recent ‘Planning Update‘ advised on how councils could respond to ensure that the planning system could operate.

 ” The Government has confirmed that it will introduce legislation to allow council committee meetings to be held virtually for a temporary period, which we expect will allow planning committees to continue.”

Chief Planner, Steve Quartermain

The Government has indeed introduced this legislation and local Councils can now legally hold online only council meetings.  It comes into force on April 4th http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/392/contents/made.

What do civic societies need to know?

The change applies to all local authorities in England and covers all categories of public meetings including planning meetings.

Existing rules about the number of councillors or members of a group required to attend to make a meeting valid will remain, but virtual attendance will count.

Government will be working with others to developing guidance for local authorities about holding remote meetings.

Will the public will still have access to public meetings through remote means?

There are still some practical concerns about how these meetings will be hosted, and in particular the manner in which members of the public will be able to participate, but meetings must remain accessible whilst ensuring that councillors, staff and the wider public are able to follow government advice. We will see how this works through in practice.

The requirement for public meetings to be made accessible to the public remains, but it will be up to each local authority to decide how they conduct meetings, how voting procedures work and how to ensure that the public has access.

An authority would have to make its own decision if it was going to cut back on public attendance and we would ask civic societies to inform us where this happens.

The regulations say:

• Live webcast of meeting is enough to comply with new rules re press and public: “(9A) In this Act, references to—
  • (a)a meeting being “open to the public” includes access to the meeting through remote means including video conferencing, live webcast, and live interactive streaming
• Where a meeting is accessible to the public through such remote means the meeting is open to the public whether or not members of the public are able to attend the meeting in person;
  • (a)any reference to being “present” at a meeting includes being present through remote attendance;
  • (b)any reference to a “place” where a meeting is held, or to be held, includes reference to more than one place including electronic, digital or virtual locations such as internet locations, web addresses or conference call telephone numbers;

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/392/regulation/13/made

Impact for civic societies and community groups?

We don’t know how this situation is going to work out.  It could be that more applications are delegated to officers or it could be that planning committees are unable to meet due to lack of IT skills for some councillors, or that meetings could be held virtually without public participation. What about controversial applications? How will they be dealt?

It is important that you get in touch with your local planning authority to let them know that you want to participate. Being a formal constituted group may well make it easier for the council to engage with you.

Today “PH” posted this comment on this 28 March East Devon Watch post (the latest post on the story of Abbeyfield’s closure of the Shandford Care Home in Budleigh):

“Abbeyfield has not mentioned that they were introduced to Amica Care by MP Simon Jupp in February of this year. From my understanding, Abbeyfield would not engage with Amica at that point, which would have given more time to consult.

The question should be asked, how a huge charity supposedly committed to its residents, can be allowed to strip the life out of residential home in their care. If it’s not to make money, then why?

Not viable? I don’t think so!”

This act of care home closure would be a heart wrenching story at the best of times. Now, as we approach the height of the worst epidemic since 1918, it is unbearable. During lockdown, residents have no physical contact with their loved ones at their time of crisis.

The residents are being taken from their homes at a time when the Government has decreed that the vulnerable should not leave their homes. As part of overall epidemic decisions escalation, it is already planned that transfer to hospital from Care Homes may not be offered if it is not likely to benefit the resident and if palliative or conservative care within the home is deemed more appropriate. Moving residents inevitably increases their risk and the risk to others. Peter Kyle MP for Brighton (Hove) has just spoken about this in an interview on today’s BBC “World at One”. The context included some relatives in his constituency being pressured into to signing “do not resuscitate” notices.

The closure is based on Abbeyfield’s declared aim of “freeing up assets” as it changes its business model to concentrate on larger homes; and County Councillor Christine Channon’s handpicked adviser Chris Davis who claims that Shandford is no longer viable. Owl has received plausible arguments that shows that there are grounds to challenge the case for non-viability.

Location.

Shandford’s public room and gardens are particularly special (there is a chicken pen in the garden clearly visible to residents). It is accessible and has a bus-stop outside encouraging visiting. The town-centre location means that even wheelchair bound residents can easily get to town with their loved ones and enjoy a more fulfilling existence.

Balance Sheet.

Knowing the numbers of residents at the time “Save our Shandford” was started in February and the fees charged it can be easily calculated that the home could expect an income of over £1M. Shandford is known to charge approximately 75% of some homes in Exmouth so there would be scope for modest fee increases if necessary. The property was bought by local subscription and there is no cost of equity, no cost of debt. Shandford is also named as a potential beneficiary in a recent legacy. It is clear from the support that “Save our Shandford” received that the local community would undertake fundraising as it has done in the past.

Property condition.

The house was built in the Edwardian period and has been extended and modernised as part of a continuous investment programme since its acquisition in 1958. From the outside it can be seen that the roof and main structure look to have been well maintained (Abbeyfield claim to have invested substantial sums since control was ceded to them in 2012). However, both Abbeyfield and  Cllr Cannon’s advisers claim that the rooms are too small (it currently has a good CQC rating) and that major works are needed to the plumbing. Owl was interested to hear that at the public meeting called by Simon Jupp MP one resident’s relative, a builder, laughed at the three figure sums being quoted. In any event, given the CQC assessment, no major works are needed in the short term, allowing opportunities for fund raising. Those trying to save Shandford have been denied access to the viability report presented to Cllr Channon (confidential apparently).

Assets

Subsequent to Abbeyfield announcing closure last autumn and actions taken by Cllr Channon, it is clear that Abbeyfield has an obligation to return monies realised by any sale to the Town. This must relate to clauses in the Transfer Deed drawn up by the original local Trustees of the Shandford Community Interest Company and Abbeyfield. Those trying to save Shandford have been denied access to the transfer deed, even though a copy is believed to be held by Devon County Council. Once the site is sold there is no way the any assets released could possibly recreate Shandford and its setting within the Town

Alternative provider.

The local community, given time, has expressed the will and energy to re-create a local Community Interest Company to take over and run Shandford but has been denied access to essential information. A more feasible and quicker option is mentioned by “PH”. Amica Care expressed an interest and Simon Jupp MP has tried to broker negotiations. Regrettably it seems minds have been made up and Abbeyfield won’t negotiate.

We are living through times when decisions made by “the authorities” are being shown, by fast moving events, to be all too often threadbare. Seldom do management decisions come to haunt the decision maker quite so soon. You are supposed to be able to “make your mark”, move on and not be called to account.

Nicola Woolcock, education correspondent, The Times 3 April

In an article he wrote for The Lancet last year the language of Public Health England’s director of health improvement seems oddly prescient.

“At a time of crisis”, John Newton wrote, “there is pressure to act, but at such a time, it is especially important that any action is informed by rational assessment of the relevant scientific evidence.”

The paper was on vaping-associated respiratory illnesses in the US but it seems likely Whitehall will be hoping he applies the logic to the present crisis after he was put in charge of testing.

Professor Newton was appointed director of health improvement in 2012. He is honorary professor of public health and epidemiology at Manchester and Exeter universities. As well as being an academic epidemiologist in the University of Oxford, he has been director of research and development in two large teaching hospitals.

He was also the first director and chief executive of UK Biobank, which holds biological samples for use in research, and the regional director of public health for NHS South Central.

Professor Newton has led England’s contribution to the Global Burden of Disease project and been chairman of the WHO European Burden of Disease Network.

In a recent blog he set out priorities that he wanted to tackle. These include the reduction in variation in smoking prevalence between rich and poor, anti-obesity initiatives, improving air quality and ensuring mental health has parity with physical health.

He said: “Tackling regional inequality is a vitally important task but we also see differences in health linked to disability, gender, race, age, sexuality or religion or amongst members of the most vulnerable or marginalised groups in society from homeless people and sex workers to people in prison.”

Nero was supposed to have fiddled while Rome burned. In our case it looks like the “Great and the Good” went to the races instead. The Cheltenham Festival took place when Italy was already in lockdown,

Will Humphries, Southwest Correspondent  www.thetimes.co.uk

There are fears the mass gathering of more than 250,000 people during the Cheltenham Festival last month helped spread the disease widely across the country as famous faces and members of the public who attended have tested positive.

The comedian Lee Mack spent two days at the pinnacle of the jump racing season before testing positive for Covid-19, with a friend saying he believed he caught it off his driver when travelling to the event.

Andrew Parker Bowles, the former husband of the Duchess of Cornwall, has also caught the coronavirus and said he thinks he “probably got it on the Wednesday or Friday I attended Cheltenham”.

During those two days he was photographed in close contact with Camilla, as well as Princess Anne, her daughter Zara Tindall and son-in-law Mike Tindall.

Mr Mack and Brigadier Parker Bowles join a growing list of famous names and members of the public who are thought to have caught the virus at the event held from March 10-13.

More than 60,000 fans a day were packed into the stands, bars, toilets and queues for the food vans at the world-famous festival with little protection apart from some hand sanitiser stations dotted around the racetrack.

The roar of the crowd at Cheltenham can send a tingle up the spine but the shouting, cheering and drunken singing by tens of thousands of punters packed cheek by jowl in the terraces and bars is a perfect environment for transmission of infection by airborne droplets from the mouth and nose.

More than 250,000 people walked in through the gates across the four days – and hundreds of them have claimed online that they have since developed symptoms.

The festival took place when Italy was already in lockdown, as of March 9, and drew criticism for still going ahead.

Anyone who caught the virus would have had it by now, given that the event finished on Mach 13 and the incubation period is 14 days, but there are fears they could have gone on and infected more people, with patients spreading the virus to two others on average.

At the time there was huge debate over whether it should have been cancelled, with Jeremy Hunt, chairman of the health and social care select committee, telling the BBC’s Newsnight: “I think it is surprising and concerning that we’re not doing any of it at all when we have just four weeks before we get to the stage that Italy is at.

“The issue is not whether you or I might get infected at a football match, it’s who we go on to meet.”

Following the festival a number of people took to social media to say they had attended and were getting symptoms the following week.

One person wrote on Twitter: “I was at Cheltenham for three days last week and I am now showing all the symptoms of coronavirus, please be careful everyone.”

Someone else replied: “Was there as well and showing signs.”

The Jockey Club, organisers of the event, said the festival “went ahead under Government guidance”. It finished three days before mass gatherings were banned.

While most of other events had been called off by individual sporting bodies before waiting for official government guidance, the festival still took place, prompting suggestions that Ministers should have done more to ensure all events were called off when the outbreak was in its infancy.

Would-be borrowers say phone calls go answered; banks say that they are working flat-out with workforces that are also affected by Covid-19 and self-isolation. But speed of execution is now vital. A flood of lending was promised to avert company collapses, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Chancellor’s hybrid will do nothing to hasten banks

Analysis  Nils Pratley Guardian 3 April

What was wrong with the government’s first version of its emergency loan package for small businesses? The problem is vividly illustrated by this statistic: only 983 companies have had loans approved out of130,000 inquiries made.

The running totals – released by the Treasury for the first time since the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, or CBILS, was launched – support loud complaints from small businesses in search of cash. The scheme was fiddly, slow and rested too heavily on banks’ judgments on eligibility.

The most important rejig by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is really a U-turn. In version A, banks were told that CBILS loans could be offered only to viable businesses that could not access finance on normal commercial terms. Now “all viable business affected by Covid-19” will be eligible.

The distinction is critical. Small business owners complained that banks were trying to steer them into standard interest-bearing loans, rather than the juicy government-backed CBILS product that is free of interest for 12 months and free of set-up fees. For their part, the banks argued they were merely implementing government rules.

The switch in approach will, almost inevitably, come at a cost to the public purse. But it should speed up processing and get more cash into the accounts of small businesses that need to pay wages and suppliers. Those 983 CBILS loans represent only £90m of lending – a trickle.

Sunak has also banned personal guarantees on loans under £250,000, another source of bitterness. But his other major reform is to fill a hole that became apparent almost immediately: the definition of a small business was set too tightly.

CBILS loans, worth up to £5m, are aimed at companies with an annual turnover of less than £45m. That threshold was too low for many midsized and family-owned firms who felt the parallel Covid Corporate Finance Facility was intended for much larger companies with formal credit ratings.

Thus Sunak has created a hybrid – a CBILS-based package for companies with annual turnover between £45m and £500m. The chief difference is that these loans won’t be interest-free, but their availability may solve the so-called “squeezed middle” problem. Up to £25m can be advanced to a borrower.

The chancellor will find it harder, however, to make the banks work faster. Would-be borrowers say phone calls go answered; banks say that they are working flat-out with workforces that are also affected by Covid-19 and self-isolation. But speed of execution is now vital. A flood of lending was promised to avert company collapses, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Headline says it all – Owl

Larry Elliott, economics editor The Guardian www.theguardian.com

Throughout history, pandemics have often had profound economic effects. The most famous of all, the Black Death of the mid-14th century, wiped out between a third and two-fifths of the population of western Europe. The labour shortages that followed are credited with hastening the end of the feudal system.

Covid-19 is nowhere near as deadly as the Black Death, but the shock it has dealt to an already vulnerable global economy has been immense. Perhaps inevitably, there is talk of life never being the same again.

But this is what was said last time. Many on the left thought that when the banks nearly went bust in 2008, the dominant free-market model would be replaced by a more progressive alternative.

It didn’t happen. The scale of the crisis wasn’t enough to bring about fundamental change; those who were the largest beneficiaries of free movement of capital were rich, powerful and well dug in; and the narrative that emerged about the 2008 crash was at odds with what really happened.

Narratives matter a lot. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s message to the American people in the 1930s was that their lives had been wrecked by Wall Street’s greed. FDR positioned his government as the friend of the unemployed and the enemy of reckless speculation. The story told by the Thatcherites and the Reaganites in the late 1970s was that organised labour had become too powerful, and the big states that emerged from the New Deal era were strangling enterprise.

The best example of how narratives shape political outcomes happened in Britain after the last crisis. The truth about the 2008-09 recession was that it was a global phenomenon facilitated by the deregulation of finance and inadequate supervision of banks. This allowed a debt bubble to inflate over many years. When it popped, the banks found themselves unable to meet the losses on their wild speculation. London’s role as a global financial centre meant Britain suffered more than most.

But the narrative that emerged was different. The story told by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of 2010 was that Britain’s problems were the result of the previous Labour government’s profligacy. Budget deficits had been run in good times and had exploded when the economy started to contract. The Conservatives offered any number of soundbites: Labour had crashed the car, it had maxed out the nation’s credit card, it had failed to mend the roof while the sun was shining. Britain would have to endure a painful period of austerity to mend the hole in the public finances, but Gordon Brown was to blame.

It all looks a bit different this time. Although his approval ratings have picked up, Boris Johnson’s task of weaving a compelling narrative out of twin economic and public health crises is much more difficult than the challenge that faced David Cameron in 2010.

Johnson has been forced to go further and faster in his response to Covid-19 than Brown did back in 2008. The cost of lost output is unknowable because it is unclear how long the economy will be locked down, but it will be enormous – and inevitable. The government has decided to keep all but essential workers at home. It therefore has no choice but to protect jobs and incomes, whatever it takes. The budget deficit is going to balloon, just as it did at the end of the noughties, and for the same reason: recession means the government spends more and takes in less in tax.

Nor will it be realistic for Johnson to say that he has no alternative but to impose another period of belt-tightening when the economy eventually comes out of hibernation. Austerity was an economic failure, resulting in a lost decade for wages, sluggish growth and public finances in a worse state than they were before the last crisis.

But austerity has also proved a political liability for the Conservatives. The public is in no mood to stomach NHS cuts. Nurses and care workers are a lot more popular than bond dealers and bankers. To scrap infrastructure projects – the customary, if short-sighted, response of hard-up governments down the ages – would be a repudiation of the manifesto that won the prime minister his election victory less than four months ago.

One of the problems a party faces when it is in power for a long time is that blaming the opposition for the mess it allegedly left behind no longer cuts it. The Conservatives have been in power for a decade. They will eventually be held to account over how prepared the UK was for this crisis.

Questions will arise: was the NHS was equipped to cope with a pandemic? The years ahead of the financial crisis saw the biggest sustained increase in health spending since the creation of the NHS in 1948; the years since 2010 have seen the smallest increases. Was the welfare system in a better shape to cope with the sharp contraction of the economy in 2008, or in 2020? Benefits were far more generous a decade ago than is the case today. Labour actually made a much better job of mending the roof.

For the right, this is the second major economic crisis in little more than a decade. It’s the second time the state has needed to come to the rescue of an economic system where the gap between rich and poor has widened, corporations pay as little tax as they can get way with, too little attention is paid to the climate emergency, and a large proportion of the workforce is one paycheck from penury. For the left, it should be an open goal.

Another Conservative policy goes up in flames on the Coronavirus bonfire – Owl

Health secretary Matt Hancock has written off £13.4bn of historic NHS debt to help the health service fight coronavirus. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk 

The money is intended to help NHS trusts focus on tackling coronavirus rather than servicing loans from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). 

The figure owed ballooned as NHS trusts became reliant on interest-bearing loans to cover deficits in day-to-day budgets, with interest payments alone skyrocketing to £292m last year, Health Service Journal has reported. 

Some 107 trusts have an average of £100m revenue debt each. The two trusts with the highest figures reach a combined total of over £1bn.

At the daily Downing Street briefing, Hancock said: “This landmark step will not only put the NHS in a stronger position to be able to respond to this global coronavirus pandemic but it will ensure our NHS has stronger foundations for the future too.” 

HuffPost UK understands the sum written off is both capital debt – from building and infrastructure – and revenue debt, from running services and paying staff and suppliers. Both loans and outstanding interest payments have been cancelled.

The debt will be effectively written off by converting the loans to equity. Adjustments will be made to ensure NHS providers’ day-to-day budgets are not negatively affected by debt write-off.

Other loans entered into as “normal course of business” will not be written off as NHS trusts took them by choice and the government considers them to be affordable.

The write-off will not create any additional borrowing or fiscal cost to the Treasury as it is being written off as a transaction within DHSC.