The government ran an exercise modelling the impact of a coronavirus outbreak four years before the Covid-19 outbreak but tried to keep it secret, the Guardian has learned. It was one of 10 previously unpublicised pandemic planning exercises in the five years before Covid-19, now disclosed under freedom of information legislation. A leading virologist said Exercise Alice could have been “completely relevant” to the Covid response, which in the first weeks was shaped by flu pandemic plans. Dr David Matthews, a reader in virology at Bristol University who studies coronaviruses, said the Mers exercise “would have been completely relevant” to the Covid-19 response. Matthews said Mers was less transmissible than Covid and more deadly, but an exercise probably would have thrown up useful lessons for Covid preparations.

Source: The Guardian June 10, 2021 04:52 UTC