The United Kingdom's border should have been closed on 31st January 2020

For some time, the header of this blog has asserted that Boris Johnson has caused thousands of avoidable deaths due to Covid-19.

In this post I set out in broad outline the actions which Boris Johnson ought to have taken on 31st January 2020 in order to avoid almost all Covid-19 infections in the United Kingdom and, in my view, to avoid all Covid-19 deaths in the United Kingdom.

For centuries, quarantine has formed a basic tool to prevent the introduction of a dangerous infection to a susceptible population.

When quarantine was first practised there were no effective treatments for bubonic plague and other dangerous infections carried by traders or on traded goods.

Similarly, in January 2020 there were no specific effective treatments for a serious coronavirus infection such as  Covid-19.

So what should a competent Prime Minister have done in order to protect the United Kingdom's population?

Boris Johnson should have protected the lives of UK residents by closing the UK border on 31st January 2020.

That border closure should have applied to air, land and sea.

Ideally, in order to minimise disruption on the island of Ireland the UK border closure should have been agreed with the Government of Ireland.

A coordinated border closure which applied to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland would have kept the British Isles essentially free of Covid-19 infection and, in my view, avoided all Covid-19 deaths in the United Kingdom and in Ireland.

In light of the United Kingdom's dependence on imported food and other imported essentials it would have been necessary for the UK Government to allow a very limited exemption for those transporting supplies essential to the United Kingdom, for example drivers of food lorries and pilots of planes carrying genuinely essential supplies.

In parallel with those tightly limited exemptions, active steps should have been taken to minimise any potential transmission from, for example, lorry drivers to those unloading food lorries at supermarket depots.

Staff at supermarket food depots who might have come into close contact with lorry drivers importing food etc should have been advised to minimise contact with all drivers of lorries coming from abroad, to wear face masks and to minimise fomite-mediated spread by regular, thorough hand washing.

The possibility of creating an emergency trans-shipment depot in Kent should have been actively explored. That would have minimised the areas of the UK to which drivers importing food etc would have travelled to.

As of today, if the UK border had been closed on 31st January 2020 in excess of 40,000 avoidable Covid-19 deaths would have been avoided.

In my view Boris Johnson was grossly negligent in not taking steps to protect lives in the United Kingdom by closing the UK Border on 31st January 2020.

If I am correct that Boris Johnson was grossly negligent there are legal consequences which potentially follow, a matter which I will address in a future post.

The United Kingdom's Pandemic Influenza Strategy - links to documents

One of the potentially important pieces of background documentation which it is relevant to examine with respect to the failures by Boris Johnson and Chris Whitty to effectively protect the Public Health in the United Kingdom is the UK's Pandemic Influenza Strategy.

This blog post provides links to a number of documents  dating from 2011 and subsequently on the United Kingdom's preparedness (sic) for an Influenza Pandemic.

• 22nd March 2011 - The Scientific Summary of Pandemic Influenza and its Mitigation: Scientific Summary of Pandemic Influenza & its Mitigation  
• 10th November 2011 - UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011: UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011 
• 13th August 2014 - Pandemic Influenza Strategic Framework: Pandemic Influenza Strategic Framework  
• 13th August 2014 - Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014: Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014  
• 2017 Exercise Cygnus Report - The version currently publicly available links from an article in the Guardian on 7th May 2020: Revealed: the secret report that gave ministers warning of care home coronavirus crisis   The document as published by the Guardian is slightly redacted. Its content is not limited to issues which relate to care homes.

One or more future blog posts will examine the interpretation of these documents and what relevance they may have to the United Kingdom's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, including the failures of that response.