Great Britain is now known as one of the countries most affected by the pandemic. Nearly 42 thousand deaths account for 300 thousand infected people here, but the authorities are not trying to reconsider their approach.
This was told by the professor of global public health at the Queen Mary University of London, David McCoy.
In his publication for The Guardian, he drew attention to the situation in Vietnam. With the onset of the pandemic, a screening program was introduced there, which initially applied only to passengers arriving in the country. People filled out a form with their contact details, they checked the temperature. Later, these measures were extended to everyone entering large cities.
At the same time, a case detection and contact tracing program, which was key to curbing the epidemic, was carried out by health workers together with volunteers. The task was to ensure a trusting relationship, because the procedure includes the disclosure of confidential information.
The professor noted that the British government for some reason ignored the obvious. For several months, experts called for recognition of the fact that “case detection and contact tracing are social and behavioral interventions based on qualified personnel and trust.” Instead, testing was conducted in isolation from contact tracing. Moreover, third-party companies did this. However, the government was obsessed with the contact tracking application for the smartphone, but did not bother to properly establish human contact.
“Given that we are still facing months of potential chaos and damage, we need to understand why the government continues to ignore established principles of good practice and why it is ready to transfer contracts to companies like Serco, instead of engaging local health systems,” concludes the author.
However, he did not rule out that the blame was “an obsession with centralized control and the privilege of private individuals over public interests”.