Some schools in the UK were shut down recently as the country ran its largest ever pandemic simulation.
Called Exercise Pegasus, the secret drill included participation at national, devolved and local levels from ministers, officials, responder organizations and the third sector.
It was focused on a fictional enterovirus originating from pigs that primarily kills children.
Officials say the exercise is all about “preparedness” but not surprisingly it has raised a number of concerns among people
Should we be worried?
The Telegraph reported: Schools across the UK were locked down this autumn as part of a state drill to tackle the threat of a new deadly virus.
Exercise Pegasus, which concluded last month and involved all major government departments, was the biggest pandemic simulation exercise the country has ever held.
Those participating in the drill were told a novel enterovirus had broken out on a fictional Island in southeast Asia before spreading across the world.
Unlike Covid-19, which disproportionately affected older age groups, the new virus was most lethal in the young. The virus, “EV-D68”, was said to cause respiratory failure, brain swelling and – in rare cases – paralysis in infants, children and teenagers.
The spread of the imagined virus resulted in travel restrictions, school and business closures and mask wearing in the UK and around the world.
Ministers involved in the drill also had to “wargame” dealing with fictional street protests over social distancing, the Telegraph understands.
News of the drill comes a week after the second module of the Covid Inquiry found the UK did “too little, too late” to contain and mitigate Covid-19 in the early part of 2020 and prevent a series of ruinous national lockdowns.
Closing schools “brought ordinary childhood to a halt” and the decision to shut them had a “profound consequence” on children, it said.
‘A realistic pandemic scenario’
Exercise Pegasus was designated a “Tier 1” national emergency exercise, meaning it involved ministerial participation, all devolved nations and activation of COBRA, the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms.
It ran in three parts in September, October and November this year and imagined a novel version of EV-D68 had triggered a pandemic.
It’s key purpose was “to simulate a realistic pandemic scenario, and is the first of its kind in nearly a decade,” according to a NHS briefing document.
The real EV-D68 is a respiratory virus first isolated in California in 1962, which has gained global traction. As well as respiratory disease and meningitis, it can cause a polio-like paralysis in children known as acute flaccid paralysis.