The government’s unfinished summer homework on Covid-19

The refrain is now well-worn: the early phase of the pandemic saw the government machine scrambling to get on top of the crisis. Ministers sat on their hands for too long over the lockdown, testing rates were too low, and announcements were made with no longer time horizon in mind than that day’s press conference. But even if some were own goals, these were decisions made under extraordinary conditions.

The government should be given less latitude for any missteps over the autumn and winter. The summer reprieve has given it the opportunity to fix earlier failings, which on some counts it has. But it has failed to ready some key pieces of its pandemic response for a second wave. So where have improvements been made, and where is preparation still insufficient?

Not “world beating”

The UK’s contact-tracing and testing infrastructure might not yet be the “world-beating” system promised by the PM, but the government has used the time since the first lockdown to correct some of its early mistakes—particularly its preference for centrally-run systems to the exclusion of local expertise. The soon-to-be-abolished Public Health England (PHE) has supported councils to set up their own contact-tracing operations to supplement the national system, and nationally recruited call-centre staff have been redirected to local efforts.

Even so, there are signs this infrastructure may not handle a winter onslaught. Contact tracers continue to miss targets. The increase in the number of tests has been accompanied by an increase in the time people are waiting for results. And even though the government reports daily capacity above 200,000, the system still cannot deliver tests to everyone who needs one. Capacity has sensibly been directed towards areas of greatest need, but this has left other areas with a shortage.

The government has also embarked on a messy reorganisation of the people working on testing and tracing, with the closure of PHE and set up of the National Institute for Health Protection. The government has not convincingly explained how this will help its efforts. Experience suggests it will at best be a damaging distraction.

Unclear local lockdowns

Contact tracing is not the sole example of the government belatedly realising that it can’t run everything from the centre. Councils now have powers that will help them contain the virus in their local areas, for instance by closing premises and stopping events taking place. They will also be given access to the central database of near real-time, patient-identifiable data that will help them fight local outbreaks.

But government communications continue to falter. Local lockdowns have been announced at the 11th hour, their legal underpinnings remain overly complex and the public has struggled to get a grip on which restrictions apply where. This will only get more difficult as restrictions are ramped up and the nation becomes a confusing patchwork of localised measures.

The government is also yet to work out a transparent system for making local lockdown decisions that secures the buy-in of local authorities. Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has likened Westminster to the Vatican, with councils waiting for the “white smoke” signalling decisions.

Low marks

Many schools—particularly the most disadvantaged—struggled with the shift to online learning: guidance from the government came well after schools closed and delays in the rollout of 200,000 laptops and tablets led to big disparities in the quality of students’ learning.

The Department for Education released a slew of guidance over the summer, like advice for schools on running a rota system for pupils if local case numbers make that necessary. It also announced £1bn in funding for catch-up tutoring for disadvantaged students and promised another 150,000 laptops in the autumn.

The government has not sat on its hands—but the question is whether this work will be enough if large numbers of schools are required to close again. Survey data from July showed that over a quarter of students had little or no IT access at home, and delays to the initial rollout suggest that a shortage of devices cannot be addressed overnight. The money on offer for tutoring could pale in comparison to demand too: the Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that funding, which will start in November, amounts to only £80 per child.

Then there are the unresolved questions over how to deal with the next A-levels cohort. These pupils are returning to school without certainty over arrangements for exams, and how the situation might change depending on the amount of schooling missed in the coming year.

Even if the government is better prepared than it was in February and March, there’s still a sense of laying the train tracks only seconds before the oncoming locomotive hurtles towards them. Repeated U-turns show it is yet to settle into a sustainable pattern of decision making, while some of the infrastructure it will need to combat a second wave is far from finished. The government has learnt from some its past mistakes, but it still has its work cut out if it isn’t to repeat others in the future.

Sarah Nickson is a researcher at the Institute for Government, and co-author of its recent report "Decision making in a crisis"