Public Health England to be discontinued and replaced by new body – Telegraph

(Reuters) – UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock will announce that Public Health England (PHE) will be dismantled and replaced by a new body specially designed to protect the country from a pandemic early next month, The newspaper reported. Telegraph.

Hancock will announce a merger of PHE pandemic response work with the National Health Service (NHS) Test and Trace in a new body, called the National Institute for Health Protection, the newspaper said. (bit.ly/3fZLmE6)

The move aims to bring together PHE’s scientific expertise and the scale of the NHS ‘Operation Test and Trace into a new body, so the country can be ready to stop a second coronavirus spike this fall, according to the Telegraph.

“The goal of the National Institute for Health Protection will be simple: to make Britain one of the best equipped countries in the world to fight the pandemic,” a senior minister told The Telegraph.

The newspaper added that the change will be “effective” in the next month, but that it will be necessary to wait until spring to officially complete the organizational change.

The new institute will be modeled after the Robert Koch Institute, the German public health agency, which has played a central role in the response to the pandemic, according to the newspaper.

PHE is coming under increasing scrutiny in Britain for its handling of the COVID-19 crisis. The government adopted a new way of counting deaths after concerns were raised that the old method followed by PHEs overestimated them.