Revealed: Dudley health bosses planned for pandemic one month before Covid-19
Black Country health bosses planned for a pandemic emerging from China one month before the outbreak of coronavirus, it has been revealed.
Dudley Council and Dudley NHS Trust, which runs Russells Hall Hospital, held Exercise Perinthus on November 13 last year.
The planning exercise was based on a "a scenario of an emerging pandemic originating from central China and spreading globally," according to council documents.
On December 31, the outbreak of Covid-19 originating in Wuhan, in central China, was reported to the World Health Organisation.
Dudley Council's health and adult social care scrutiny committee will review the borough's response to Covid-19 at a meeting tonight.
More Covid-19 coverage:
The committee's chairman, Councillor Dave Tyler, said the council will use the findings on how to prepare for the winter and for any possible "second wave of Covid-19".
"If we get a second wave coming through - and having planned for a pandemic at some time or another - we have got to be absolutely certain, as a council and our partners, that we are prepared for everything," he said.
A report in the committee's papers said: "Prior to Covid-19, one of the highest risks to the UK was the emergence of an influenza pandemic. National guidance and planning for pandemic flu pre-dated 2015.
"In 2019, the local authority and system partners agreed to conduct a Dudley system-wide pandemic exercise to test the system response.
Solutions
"This would enable us as an organisation and system to update our plans and preparedness for a pandemic.
"Exercise Perinthus was based on a scenario of an emerging pandemic originating from central China and spreading globally, with a higher mortality rate than the previous pandemic of 2009.
"The aim was to test how local command and control of an incident would take place across agencies, identify any gaps in our response as well has how Dudley could find solutions to these problems.
"Those solutions identified in the exercise, have been used to influence decisions in the current Covid-19 pandemic, including personal protective equipment, siting of screening facilities and excess deaths.
"Lessons identified from this event and the current pandemic will be used to inform the review and preparedness of our local planning."
Diane Wake, chief executive of the Dudley NHS Trust, said: "The trust, like all NHS organisations, regularly takes part in emergency planning exercises, both as part of the NHS and involving our partners locally. This ensures we are well prepared to deal with any critical incident.
"The exercise in November enabled us to work closely with our partners to ensure how we could offer a joined up approach to pandemic influenza planning and this has been critical to the effectiveness of our response to Covid-19.
"Our current focus is on restoring, over the next six months, full patient access to services at the hospital and addressing the needs of those patients for whom Covid-19 has resulted in a delay to their non urgent care.
"We remain under national direction for Covid-19 and have produced local guidelines and policy, in line with national guidance, for response to any further outbreaks.
"Currently we are seeing a significant drop in the numbers of Covid-19 patients in the hospital."
