Tony Blair: The system will say it’s doing its best on Covid. That isn’t good enough

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AFP via Getty Images
Tony Blair11 January 2021
WEST END FINAL

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The NHS and the entire system are making Herculean efforts faced with the uniquely complex and difficult challenge of Covid-19.

Yesterday’s announcements about mass testing and vaccine roll-out are good news. But unfortunately, our enemy — the virus — is also doubling down and mutating as London knows full well to its cost. We are quite possibly in a two to three-year battle with Covid-19.  

It seems the vaccines we have are okay against the virus we have at present. But the “Kent” and South Africa mutations, and speculative reports of ones elsewhere, only emphasise what the science has told us from the beginning: the virus is highly infectious, clever, open to constant mutation and therefore very hard to control.

Some things clear from the start have nonetheless infinitely greater urgency now.

The faster we are vaccinated, the less the chance of mutation. So, vaccine acceleration is paramount. We need the capability nationally and globally to analyse new strains immediately, and if necessary, prepare new vaccines.

Data collection is absolutely vital — from registering every vaccination centrally, to following each person vaccinated to check responses, to studying how different types of people are affected in which ways by different vaccines, to registering every test, to putting in place the requirement for a Covid Pass at least in order to travel and probably for everything from attending an O2 concert to the FA Cup final.

We need to scale up the new therapeutic drugs coming on stream.

Vaccine firms need financial assurance that whatever they manufacture will be bought and every help given to speed up manufacture and delivery, including improving the regulatory approval processes.

The Government should convene a  panel of top advisers — scientists, clinicians, pharma producers, regulators — drawn from the best globally. They should give advice as to how processes can be quickened and decision times radically shortened.

The crisis has revealed fundamental weaknesses in the global health architecture from data surveillance, to vaccine development to trial procedures, production and manufacturing. These must be corrected. 

But meanwhile we’re in the middle of a changing crisis and we can’t wait for these corrections.

At every step of this crisis, though systems have adjusted to do remarkable things, we have always been behind the curve

At every step of this crisis, though systems have adjusted to do remarkable things, we have always been behind the curve not in front of it. We are now in a new situation. But we have constantly through this crisis been in a new situation and only realised it too late.

This is not a criticism of the UK Government. All governments, or nearly all, have been in the same position.

We thought that an Easter/early summer lockdown would allow easing and an end to the crisis. Except for those countries able plausibly to construct a strategy of eradication (which required very early lockdown), this was never going to happen.

It was certain that as we eased, the disease level would go up again. And indeed, it did.

We then thought we could apply a tiered approach to lockdown and concentrate on the “hotspot” areas while others were let free. It was never going to work; and it didn’t.

We then thought a fresh winter lockdown would allow us a final break before vaccination arrived in spring and summer. But the virus had mutated.  

Transmission rates went out of control. Vaccination on the timetable predicted is not adequate and we can’t accelerate it without massive and well-prepared plans in place, which aren’t yet there.

We need to go onto a new footing. I know this is easy to say and supremely difficult to do

We need to go onto a new footing. I know this is easy to say and supremely difficult to do.

I know those inside government will be deeply frustrated by what they will regard as advice or criticism from those outside when they will think they are straining every sinew to beat this disease.  

But we need to do four things on a radically bigger and better scale than at present. Getting more vaccines produced and in our hands. Getting vaccines into the arms of the population.

Mass testing using the best rapid tests we can for disease control and understanding. And a data system which records in minute detail every bit of Covid-19 information we need.

The system will say it’s doing the best it can on all fronts.  The stark truth is that this best isn’t good enough.

This crisis isn’t ending soon; and the economic and health damage of prolonged lockdown is frightening.

Our opponent — this virus – is smart, agile, resilient and willing to shift instantly it is threatened, to ward off the threat.

We have to be the same. 

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