Disease Control

(asked on 20th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on what date his Department most recently undertook a rehearsal exercise for a pandemic; what outcomes his Department identified from that exercise; and how many of those outcomes were not reversed and were not implemented.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 13th May 2020

The most recent National Level (Tier 1) exercise to test preparedness for a pandemic was Exercise Cygnus. Exercise Cygnus assessed the United Kingdom’s preparedness and response to a pandemic influenza and took place in October 2016.

Exercises at both the national and local level form an essential element of the Government’s pandemic influenza preparedness programme. In addition to National Level (Tier 1) exercises, smaller scale exercises to test response plans for infectious disease outbreaks have been undertaken. The Government also supports organisations at the local level to develop and exercise their pandemic plans.

In February 2020 an exercise was held to rehearse Ministerial-level decision-making for the UK’s pandemic preparedness and response within the context of what was known at that point about the COVID-19 outbreak.

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