Scotland ‘must be ready for next crisis’

A group of public health doctors and epidemiologists has called for Scotland to be better prepared for any future pandemic or a second wave of Covid-19.

Experts from the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) said there needs to be more robust plans to protect vulnerable groups such as those in care homes.

They said previous planning exercises over-relied on flu pandemic modelling and the idea that normal life would go on as the population acquired immunity.

Despite “extensive” planning at the Scottish Government level down, the group said there is inadequate protection for healthcare staff.

The RCPE has set out five measures to help Scotland and the UK prepare for a future pandemic or a second spike in coronavirus.

These include “sleeping” contracts for personal protective equipment and drugs in case there is a sudden rise in demand.

Capacity for treatment and testing needs to be scaled up, it said, while action should be taken quickly to protect “shielded” groups.

Frontline staff should be able to work safely and there needs to be rapid understanding of outbreaks in other countries, it added.

Dr Susan Pound, vicepresident at the RCPE, said: “While we acknowledge that planning was done from government level down, we think that it would have been helpful to have focused more on wider public health and the health and social care system as a whole, rather than concentrating so heavily on secondary care and the NHS.”

There was a view that diseases such as MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and SARS would not come to Britain, she said, which affected the UK’S preparedness.

Dr Pound added: “We have seen evidence that nations such as South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong learned from their response to MERS and mounted an effective response to Covid- 19, and it is vital that we are in a position to learn from what has and has not been successful, in order to be better prepared in responding to a second wave of the coronavirus, or a future pandemic.”