WHEN did the various governments and political leaders across the UK know just how bad it was going to be? Did they know earlier this year, as the outbreak began spreading and politicians missed emergency meetings, that coronavirus was set to be catastrophic – yet still fail to act adequately?

Or does the fault go back to 2016? It’s then that Exercise Cygnus – a simulation of a mass outbreak of flu in Britain – was conducted. The dummy run showed that Britain was critically underprepared for pandemic. What did our political leaders learn from the exercise? We don’t know as the findings have still not been published by the UK Government. Apparently they’re too terrifying for public consumption.

Or does failure go even deeper – back to 2009, when pandemic stockpiles were set up but critical protective gear left off the shopping list?

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In truth, our leaders and our governments knew much earlier. Politicians knew as far back as 2004 of the profound risks of pandemic. They were warned by their own emergency planners but nevertheless still failed to properly prepare.

How do I know? Because back in 2004 I was leaked official emergency planning documents which showed politicians were fully aware of the devastation a pandemic could unleash on an unprepared society.

The Herald newspapers published my front page investigations into the risk of pandemic – and what our politicians knew about the threats – on Boxing Day 2004.

Cast your minds back, and you’ll remember that as 2005 dawned, there was growing panic about Bird Flu – or H5N1 – turning pandemic. The World Health Organisation was nervous and warned in early December 2004 that it was “concerned that the recent appearance and widespread distribution of an avian influenza virus … has the potential to ignite the next pandemic”.

WHO urged all countries to update their emergency planning so they could respond “to the widespread socio-economic disruptions that would result from having large numbers of people unwell or dying”.

I was soon leaked an internal UK government emergency planning paper. Back then, it made for scary reading. It outlined a scenario in which Britain’s key services, like the electricity system, would struggle to keep working as more and more staff fell ill, or were hospitalised.

The government was also worried about the risk to public order, believing that “pandemic” could trigger violent or chaotic social disturbances. The document read: “A minimum of 25 per cent of the population will become ill over each six to eight week period, with additional people affected due to those caring for the sick and ‘worried-well’.” Some ten to 35 per cent of the workforce could be absent from work.

The most dire reading in the leaked document, I was passed at Christmas time 2004, came under the heading ‘Planning Assumptions’. One section said: “Mortality is likely to be high – estimated at one per cent of the total population.” That suggested, in Scotland, some 50,000 people could die. That would mean an estimated 600,000 deaths in the UK.

I spoke to sources close to the then UK government’s emergency planning committees, which were at that time considering what to do about a coming flu pandemic. They told me that these figures were at the higher end of the scale. But, they added, the global death rate could top 100 million.

Using a less frightening estimate, planners guessed that if 10 per cent of the population got sick the death rate would be around 21,000 in Scotland and 250,000 across the whole of Britain.

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Emergency planners warned in the document: “Influenza will spread rapidly in schools. Up to 50 per cent of schoolchildren may develop influenza; 90 per cent in residential schools. This will impact working parents.

“Closing schools has a significant impact on business continuity and maintenance of essential services, particularly health care, due to parent workers needing to stay at home for childcare.

“Similar spread is likely in other closed communities such as residential care facilities, barracks and prisons.”

The document warned that “farms, transport, processing plants, shops” would suffer. So would the economy, with “industry, tourism, banks and transport” the worst affected.

Back in 2004, a Pandemic Influenza Plan was sent to the NHS for regional responses to be drawn up. Regional planning workshops were held for emergency services. The UK Department of Health had a working group for outbreak preparation. Health departments in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland were working with the Cabinet Office’s Civil Contingencies Group on pandemic planning.

Yet today, we see politicians didn’t heed warnings. Adequate preparations were not taken.

The 2004 Bird Flu fears came on the heels of Sars – which caused panic around the world in 2003, killing 700 people. Like H5N1 and Coronavirus, Sars is a disease which jumped from animals to humans.

In 2004, Dr Jim McMenamin, consultant epidemiologist with the NHS’s Health Protection Scotland agency, said he believed it was “a question of when, rather than if, we get an influenza pandemic”. McMenamin also warned of globalisation and air travel speeding up infection. “All is takes is just one person to serve as a seed,” he told me.

It was also expected any vaccine for Bird Flu would take around six months to develop. The emergency planning papers said that, once developed, vaccine would be “given according to national agreed priorities”. The documents also warned that “concerns about pandemic influenza are at an all-time high”.

The papers said that while “a pandemic strain is likely to first emerge outside the UK … emergence in the UK cannot be ruled out. We need to prepare on the basis that we have little or no warning”. If the disease was able to pass from human to human then it will be “highly infectious”, the report said, adding: “Each case could infect as many as ten other people.”

In response to The Herald’s investigations, the then Scottish Executive said it was “well aware of the potential risk of a flu pandemic”, and officials were working with the rest of the UK to minimise and control any outbreak.

Reading these documents all these years later, raises one vital question: if our governments were warned by emergency planners back in 2004 that there was a catastrophic risk from global pandemic, what the hell have they been doing for the last 16 years?

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