Exercise Alice

Exercise Alice was a Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV) pandemic modelling exercise conducted by United Kingdom government officials in February 2016.[1] The details of the exercise was kept secret on grounds of national security[2] until October 2021.[3]

The one-day tabletop exercise was the idea of the chief medical officer, Sally Davies, who gave the opening briefing. Other participants included 15 officials from Public Health England, 14 officials from the Department of Health and Social Care and 10 from NHS England. Two representatives from the Cabinet Office and one from each of the devolved administrations of Wales and Scotland were also present.[4][5][6]

It was one of a number of pandemic-planning exercises prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.[5][2] Some of the key issues raised in the report became problems in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, including shortages of personal protective equipment, failure to impose pandemic-related travel restrictions from overseas, and failure to have a working contact tracing system.[3]

A partly redacted copy of the report from the exercise was published in October 2021.[7]

See also

References
  1. "SCHEDULE 2 – THE SERVICES" (PDF). NHS England. p. 6. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
  2. Dyer, Clare (11 June 2021). "Pandemic preparedness: UK government kept coronavirus modelling secret". The BMJ. 373: n1501. doi:10.1136/bmj.n1501. ISSN 1756-1833. PMID 34117008. S2CID 235396289. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  3. Booth, Robert (7 October 2021). "Coronavirus report warned of impact on UK four years before pandemic". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  4. Public Health England (15 February 2016). "Report: Exercise Alice" (PDF). DocumentCloud. Retrieved 15 October 2021.
  5. Booth, Robert (10 June 2021). "Secret planning exercise in 2016 modelled impact of Mers outbreak in UK". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
  6. Hammond, Phil (12–25 November 2021). "Pandemic update: MD on a change in groupthink". Private Eye. No. 1560. p. 8.
  7. McKee, Martin (11 October 2021). "Exercise Alice: the UK government tested the response to a coronavirus, but why are we only discovering this now?". The BMJ. Retrieved 15 October 2021.
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