COVID-19 PRESS CONFERENCE FOR ENGLAND, SUNDAY 17 MAY


This “presser” was led by Alok Sharma MP, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.  He was supported by Prof Stephen Powis, National Medical Director of NHS England, a doctor otherwise specialising in renal (kidney) medicine.

The entire presser can be found on YouTube

The graphics can be found here, especially as they were not shown clearly during the presser.  This page also lists links to the graphics shown at other pressers.


My comments that follow should be read in the context of what I might expect in these pressers.  

I would give tentative thumbs up to the core of this presser, despite technical problems with the graphics, and not being able to take live questions. 
  
Powis was his usual quietly confident self, which I find reassuring. He answers questions directly and clearly, with one notable exception below about PPE supplies.  Whereas the politicians who grace these lecterns rarely do answer questions directly. Sharma is no exception.

The focus of the presser was Sharma announcing further financial support for the programmes developing vaccines at Oxford University and Imperial College London, and to support the creation of vaccine manufacturing facilities in the UK.  But he pointed out that a vaccine needs to be both effective and safe, and that is not guaranteed. 

The reason for that uncertainty is that there is still not proof that having the disease confers immunity, and so no guarantee that vaccines would fare any better.  Indeed there has never been a vaccine proven for other coronaviruses, which include SARS and MERS and about 20% of common colds.

As to timescales, the main vaccine manufacturing facility is not due to be in production until next July 2021, so there’s also to be a “rapid deployment facility”.  So the availability of vaccines in bulk as early as this September 2020 is incredibly optimistic.  This article confimrs Summer 2021, but doesnt explain its headling of September 2020/   Much more likely to be next year, if at all. 

Which leads on to the “could have done better” criticisms…

GENERAL CRITICISMS

There are a number of points that apply to all the recent pressers, as a lot of material is rarely changed:
  • All the presser presenters, including the scientists, call the virus  “coronavirus”.  It is only “this coronavirus”, as there are many others.  This seemingly trivial difference is important, for example, when it comes to explaining the doubt about developing a vaccine or medicines, as above.  The British public can understand.
  •  Indeed why isn’t this virus called SARS2, as an abbreviation of its official name SARS-COV-2?  The public understand HIV causes AIDS.  SARS2 causes COVID-19.  It’s often useful to distinguish the virus from the disease.
  • SARS2 sounds more dangerous than the ‘cuddly’ coronavirus.  Indeed SARS2 should be treated like a 'poison', which affects some people more than others.  Every individual should do what they can to avoid giving the 'poison' to anyone else.
  • The new measures listed on the third slide were glossed over again.  They need to be covered much more thoroughly..
  •  Indeed ”face coverings” (or Simple Source Control masks) have yet to get into the mainstream advice on the NHS website. Nor were they on the recent newspaper covers.  And why only in confined spaces?  Why not every time you leave the house?  So much simpler, and could make all the difference in keeping the transmission R down.
  • This is yet another example of the appalling communications.  I’ll cover that in more detail separately.
  • Testing numbers remain weird.  Positive test result “cases” remain less than 10% of total tests.  Why?  If some of these are ‘false negatives’, that potentially means people with symptoms are being released into the community when they would otherwise have self-isolated.  Dangerous.  Why has no journalist spotted this and asked?



SPECIFIC MATTERS

There were a couple of specific issues worth highlighting, including:
  • One of the questions was whether there is enough PPE, not just for current level of hospital admissions, but also if there were to be a second wave of infection  Powis’s answer was not emphatic.  As enough PPE was one of the conditions before easing the lockdown, how can easing be justified yet?
  • There was also a question as to whether test/track/trace for teachers and schools would be ready by 1 June, when some classes would resume.  No answer. 
  • Nor any answer to a question about arrivals at Heathrow.


OVERALL ASSESSMENT
Overall on a scale of -2 dreadful to +2 great, this was at best a +0.5.  Or a B+ in old money.

That's simply not good enough.

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