In Britain, a plan to combat coronavirus was developed 16 years ago, and then lost
A 16-year-old coronavirus plan has been unveiled in the UK. The document was lost at one time, and recently found, reports The Independent .
The strategy was developed back in 2005, when the country's authorities feared the SARS coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome, also atypical pneumonia). The first case was reported in November 2002 in China. At the end of February 2003, the virus began to actively spread in other countries. Scientists already then described the possibility of a coronavirus strain with a mortality rate of up to 35%. “I don’t understand where this plan went then,” complained one of the document’s creators.
“He was overlooked. We could have saved tens of thousands of lives, ”said David King, former chief scientific adviser to the country's government.
The strategy included recommendations such as self-isolation, restricting the movement of citizens, testing, tracing contacts with sick people and increasing stocks of personal protective equipment. In the winter of 2020, the British government started from scratch to develop ways to stop the COVID-19 outbreak.
In Britain, over the entire time of the pandemic, about 5.95 million cases of COVID-19 were detected.
Earlier, the Swiss scientist Didier Pitte said that a new coronavirus infection could appear in the world as early as 2013. According to him, the virus, 96% similar to SARS-CoV-2, was detected eight years ago in caves located 1,100 kilometers from Wuhan. Pitte suggested that the people working in the cave could then catch the virus.
