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Public Health England is to be replaced by a new agency that will deal specifically with protecting the country from pandemics, according to a report.
The Sunday Telegraph says Health Secretary Matt Hancock will this week announce the creation of a new body modeled on the German Robert Koch Institute.
Ministers were reportedly unhappy with the way PHE responded to the coronavirus crisis.
The government has been contacted by the BBC but declined to comment on the report.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Affairs said: ‘Public Health England has played a vital role in our national response to this unprecedented global pandemic.
“We have always been clear that we need to learn the right lessons from this crisis to ensure that we are in the strongest possible position, both as we continue to fight Covid-19 and to respond to any future threat to public health.
The Telegraph reports that Mr Hancock will merge the NHS testing and tracing program with work in responding to the PHE pandemic.
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The newspaper said the new body could be called the National Institute for Health Protection and would become “effective” in September, but that the change would not be fully completed until spring.
The Robert Koch Institute, on which the new body would be based, is an independent agency that has taken control of Germany’s response to the pandemic.
Earlier this month, the government introduced a new way of counting daily coronavirus deaths in England, fearing the method PHE uses overestimates them.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson also said the country’s response to Covid-19 could have been done “differently” and that the government needs to learn lessons.
There has been talk in the air in Westminster for some time about a major upheaval or even the removal of Public Health England.
Responsibility for the controversial decision to stop testing and tracing community coronaviruses in March has been brought to PHE’s door.
The organization finds itself with others in the political crossfire over the management of the Covid-19 crisis. It has now emerged that his remaining responsibilities for virus testing and surveillance of infection data in England will be transferred to a new body including the NHS Test and Trace.
PHE will continue to be responsible for prevention issues such as anti-obesity measures for the time being.
PHE is easy to point the finger at, but it is an executive agency accountable to Secretary of State Matt Hancock.
The March decisions were taken in collaboration with ministers and key medical and scientific advisers. Sources point out that PHE was never created to be an organization responsible for mass community testing and what is needed now is an organization focused entirely on pandemic planning.
A full review of who is responsible and guilty of what policies will have to wait for an independent investigation – whenever this happens.
John Ashton, a former regional director of public health in the north west of England, said PHE had had “a serious pandemic” but criticized plans announced by the government to shut down the organization.
He told the BBC News Channel: “You are not dealing with the problem of one organization that is too centralized and dysfunctional by creating another organization that is too centralized, which is proposed.
“You don’t change horses halfway – this pandemic still has a long way to go,” he said, adding that the PHE should be beefed up rather than dropped.
PHE was established in 2013 – as part of an overhaul of the NHS in England under former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt – with responsibilities such as preparing for and responding to health-related emergencies such as pandemics.
It currently employs around 5,500 full-time people, mainly composed of scientists, researchers and public health professionals.
Its website says it was created to bring together public health specialists from more than 70 organizations into a single public health service.
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