No objective and no plan – the government is repeating the failures of spring

It is galling to watch the government repeat its grave errors of judgement and, once again, fail to take decisive action to control this second surge of Covid-19 infections – just as it failed to in March. Indeed it is more than galling. Again, lives will be lost needlessly, and for much the same reasons. Lessons have not been learnt.

On the precautionary principle, on the firm expert advice of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and in the interests of the effectiveness of policy, some form of national lockdown is as necessary now as it was in the spring.

In March, we know that vital days were lost as the government dithered. Some, then as now, favoured the  “herd immunity” strategy, focussing on protecting the vulnerable. Then as now, others fretted about the economic costs and burden on the public finances. Then as now, there were worries about infringement of personal freedoms and civil liberties.

Ministers, experts and advisers, faced with an unprecedented crisis, were pushed this way and that before Boris Johnson made his “stay at home” broadcast. He was too slow to take a lead, just as he is now. Other failures, on care homes, on equipment, on test and tracing and, initially, on an adequate financial support package, compounded the delay to the lockdown.

The result for Britain of these combined mistakes was one of the worst death rates in the developed world. Now it is happening again. It is true that the NHS and the country as a whole is better prepared than it was six months ago. There are new treatments and techniques, new awareness and understanding of the virus, and larger stocks of protective equipment and ventilators. Yet the same lack of a plan to make the current range of local lockdowns effective repeats the failures of the spring and summer.

In particular, there is no sense that the government will use whatever time is bought now to implement an effective test and trace regime. If the time gained in the summer had been used properly and a system was now up and running, Britain would not need a fresh national lockdown, and the local lockdowns would be smaller, shorter and less severe. As it is, the pattern of stop-go lockdowns will continue, with only temporary and localised success, until a testing regime is implemented. At the moment, Sage judges the current restrictions to be of “marginal” impact.

On a mostly densely populated small island with close transport links, there is little sense in pretending that the coronavirus can be restricted to certain postcodes or counties. Even with much more onerous travel bans that would prove impossible. The rates of Covid infection are rising everywhere, and it will spread where it will because that is the nature of its exponential growth. That is why this is a global pandemic. A succession of local measures merely succeeds in moving the virus around a bit; it only takes a few superspreaders to transform an area. Northern Ireland has gone from one of the lowest risk areas to the very highest in a few weeks. No MP or council leader should delude themselves into thinking they can insulate their territory because they imagine their citizens are more responsible. Even if that was true, the virus will still get through.  

A national lockdown now, long or short, is necessary but far from sufficient. It is a temporary, artificial method of suppressing the virus. Only a test, trace and isolate system can drive infections down on a sustainable basis. As former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said in the Commons, the government must aim for every British resident to be tested for Covid every week, irrespective of lockdowns or progress towards a vaccine. A firm deadline, under pain of dismissal, should be set for those in charge of test and trace to reach that objective, ie to make it practicable even if compliance might not be 100 per cent.

But apart from talk of moonshots and world-beating apps, there is no objective, no plan, and thus no alternative to endless stop-go patchy lockdowns. In the end, people will wonder what the point of such lockdowns is. That would be a still more dangerous tipping point in this grim saga.