Jeremy Hunt has been forced to answer questions on Exercise Alice - you can listen to the interview here. He is asking us to believe the Chief Medical Officer was worried about national preparedness for a MERS Coronavirus, organised Exercise Alice without his involvement, then failed to communicate consensus concerns raised by experts during Exercise Alice to any minister from the Department of Health. 

We now have a plan for the next stage of our legal campaign for transparency. But let's start by paying tribute to what your generous donations have achieved so far.

To date, we have:

1. Forced Matt Hancock to address Parliament and publish the report into Exercise Cygnus
2. Forced the Government to publish secret NHS population triage plans for rationing healthcare during a pandemic - detailing who will be allowed to die if the NHS is overwhelmed by a pandemic
3. Forced the Government to disclose a list of 9 more secret pandemic exercises conducted in the five years leading up to COVID-19
4. Forced the Government to publish 7 reports into these pandemic exercises, including Exercise Alice which modelled a MERS Coronavirus five years before COVID-19 and which warned the Government that it must ensure contact tracing capabilities, PPE supplies and NHS bed capacity
5. Increased the profile of our campaign across the political spectrum - the NHS triage plans were published on the front page of the Telegraph, and Exercise Alice was published on the front page of the Guardian
6. Secured 18 national and international publications since the launch of our campaign

What's next:

1. Exercise Cygnus and Exercise Alice have provided lists of "lessons identified" by experts during the UK's pandemic exercises. We need to understand why these lessons were not implemented to understand why the UK was so poorly prepared for COVID-19.
2. The Health Select Committee's report yesterday has failed to answer this question. It says we should have learned from MERS like South Korea, but at the same time it covers up the fact that the UK modelled MERS during Exercise Alice and provided important lessons which were not implemented. We say "covers up" because the Chair of the Health Select Committee was the Secretary of State for Health when his department carried out Exercise Alice.
3. Exercise Alice goes further than most pandemic reports, and details an action plan to implement its lessons in its conclusions: "The exercise did highlight a number of briefings, protocols, training and preparatory materials development required to support an effective MERS-CoV response and this would be the next progression". The Alice Report also plans to develop a contact tracing tool and analyse how the North Korean experience can be applied to the UK..

Our next objective is to force the Government to disclose the actions, briefings and protocols following from Exercise Alice. This will be a major step forwards in understanding why the UK's pandemic exercises did not lead to an effective response to COVID-19.

Our legal timeline suggests the Government - purely for political self-preservation - will do everything possible to prevent us from learning why we were so poorly prepared for COVID-19. However, it's essential to uncover the truth if we hope to prepare for future pandemics, which remain our number one risk on our National Risk Register. Disaster and emergency experts have warned that the next pandemic could be much worse.

Please continue supporting our campaign. The more you give, the further we can go.

Dr Moosa Qureshi

CygnusReports.org

Brief update - we and the Guardian Newspaper have just published Exercise Alice, a report on a secret coronavirus exercise carried out 4 years ago and which it appears the Government failed to act on.

We've also published six other secret pandemic reports. You can download all seven reports here.

Future pandemics remain our number one risk on our national risk register. We remain absolutely committed to our legal battle to ensure transparency and accountability in pandemic preparedness. 

Dr Moosa

cygnusreports.org

Our campaign for pandemic transparency is on the front page of the Telegraph. This is effective political campaigning – many of the Prime Minister’s political supporters will be reading.  

Here's the extraordinary evidence we've uncovered:

1. It turns out that after Exercise Cygnus, NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care developed rather good guidance for NHS staff dealing with a severe pandemic. Then they refused to provide the document to frontline staff overwhelmed by COVID-19. 

2. They also wrote a social care report saying that the Government lacked data to model social care in a pandemic. The report wasn't supposed to be made publicly available. 

We've published downloadable versions of both documents on our blog.

3. Politicians and healthcare executives failed to prepare for COVID-19, and refused to provide guidance at our hour of greatest need. We must now see accountability for their incompetence. 

150,000 people have died in the UK during COVID-19. We think the public have a right to more data about our national pandemic preparedness and why those deaths happened. Donate to our campaign and help us establish pandemic transparency !

Thank you for your support.

@DrMQureshi

cygnusreports.org

Landmark victory: Both the Telegraph and the Guardian have reported that the Information Commissioner has ordered the Department of Health to disclose secret pandemic surge and triage briefing papers.

The Department of Health and NHS England's refusal to publish a triage policy is nothing short of a national scandal - they transferred legal liability from politicians to NHS healthcare professionals and failed to define the rights of NHS patients and care home residents. This almost certainly contributed to increased mortality during COVID-19.

You can find the full story here: "Health Secretary ordered to disclose secret pandemic surge documents".

Please help us continue our legal battles for pandemic transparency by sharing our Crowdjustice page on social media, and consider making a donation so that we can continue driving forwards for pandemic transparency. 

With your help, we can uncover the truth about why the UK was so poorly prepared for COVID-19, and learn lessons for future pandemics.

We can do this together!
@DrMQureshi
CygnusReports

We can announce today that we've uncovered the existence of nine secret pandemic and epidemic exercises carried out by the Government in the five years leading up to COVID-19. We have the names, the dates, and the diseases modelled for each exercise. The Guardian has reported our story here!



Exercise Alice modelled MERS - a type of coronavirus. The Guardian reports that Mr Hancock kept this data secret even from his own scientific advisors!

You can find more information here: CygnusReports on Exercise Alice! 

Please spread the news about our campaign, by retweeting here. We're incredibly grateful for the generous donations which have allowed us to keep fighting for pandemic transparency.

Kind regards,

@DrMQureshi
CygnusReports.org

This is a brief progress report on our ongoing legal action to uncover the full story of the Cygnus Reports.

Firstly, we're continuing legal action against the Cabinet Office, Department of Health, NHS England, and Public Health England. We've now made legal submissions for ICO decisions, and you can see updates on our progress here: Cygnus Timeline!

Secondly, we can report some exciting developments in our efforts to get hold of the raw data from Exercise Cygnus, in particular from the "Resilience Forums" which played an important and little understood role in UK pandemic preparedness. You can read the story in our new blog The Only Way is Essex Fire Service!

Essex Fire Service have told us they hold the Cygnus data but refused to give us access on grounds of national security. We've challenged this, and the ICO is now investigating their claim. You can read more about the cat-and-mouse game played by Essex Resilience Forum alongside all our blog articles (including the latest analysis of the Astra Zeneca vaccine!)  in our CygnusReports Blog!

Lastly, please continue to support us by sharing our blog on social media and spreading the news about our campaign. We're unlocking a complex secret government exercise which can give us the answers to why the UK was so poorly prepared for COVID-19. The more you tell our story, the more impact we can have, and make sure this never happens again!

Dr Moosa Qureshi
@DrMQureshi
CygnusReports.org

Today on our Cygnus Timeline we can announce important developments in our campaign to achieve transparency in pandemic data following Exercise Cygnus.

On 19 December, we uncovered evidence of secret “population triage” briefing papers prepared following Exercise Cygnus – a policy for allocating scarce resources during a pandemic. These documents are incredibly important - they decide who will be cared for, and who will be allowed to die, if the NHS is overwhelmed.

We are now in Phase 2 of our campaign to force the Government to disclose its triage policy and other secret pandemic documents. We’re currently engaged in legal action through the ICO against five public authorities:

[1] Department of Health – our request has been blocked by a Minister of the Crown and we have today lodged formal legal grounds for disclosure to the Information Commissioner
[2] NHS England – we have already secured a formal Decision Notice from the Information Commissioner that NHS England has breached section 10(1) of FOI legislation
[3] The Cabinet Office – we are seeking the minutes of mock COBR meetings where Jeremy Hunt was asked to allow thousands of patients to die by switching off their ventilators
[4] Public Health England – we are seeking reports on a series of pandemic exercises including a secret Ebola exercise
[5] Local Resilience Forum – we are contesting refusal to disclose pandemic data on grounds of national security

The Lancet has just published modelling data which predicts 20,000 to 90,000 UK deaths as we come out of lockdown, even after vaccination. We think our campaign for healthcare transparency is incredibly important as we approach a third wave of COVID-19, and to protect ourselves against future novel viruses. Please support Phase 2 of our campaign with your generous donations and by spreading the message that we have a democratic right to pandemic transparency.

Dr Moosa Qureshi
@DrMQureshi
CygnusReports.org

Today, the Telegraph's Investigations Editor has revealed that the Department of Health continues to withhold an NHS surge capacity and triage report which was prepared following on from Exercise Cygnus.



This triage report fills in the healthcare gaps in the published PHE report and raises ethical questions which need to be in the public domain - we believe it decides who the NHS will care for (and who it will deny care to) in the event of a massive pandemic which overwhelms NHS services. In this time of Brexit and a third pandemic wave which threatens to overwhelm the NHS, it's incredibly important that we resume our legal campaign for our right to know about the Cygnus data driving Government policy during COVID-19.

We have developed an ambitious plan to expand our campaign to gain access to all significant reports which followed Cygnus, including the key report on NHS surge capacity. This campaign is now gaining support from major news media and investigative journalists:

There is no persuasive scientific argument for secrecy in a pandemic. Please support our campaign - your generous donations can fund real change. You can find more information on our legal campaign - and the Government's evasion - here: https://cygnusreports.org/timeline/

Dr Moosa Qureshi
@DrMQureshi @JRcovid19 @54kdoctors

This is a really brief message to let you know we've set up a new website called CygnusReports.org which contains lots of interesting information, including media stories about our campaign and our own legal case files.

We've set this up now, in anticipation of accelerating our campaign for transparency. Please check it out and share with friends.

Thank you once again for your donations. Your generosity is creating real change.

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @LeighDay_Law @54kdoctors

The Department of Health have finally contacted us to categorically deny that the Health Secretary holds any other reports on Cygnus. It's remarkable that the Health Secretary refused to disclose any Cygnus data in response to our initial pre-action request in April 2020, forced us to go to court in the public interest, delayed disclosure for over 6 months, and then published Public Health England's Cygnus report only weeks before our Judicial Review renewal hearing.

Since the Health Secretary has been forced to publish PHE's report on Cygnus, and since he denies having further reports, we have decided to withdraw from further action under Judicial Review. The full Leigh Day press release is here.

It’s important to emphasise that the Health Secretary's disclosure provides important information, but fails to provide transparency regarding the NHS's preparedness to deal with a civil emergency. Your generous donations will allow us to now focus our efforts on locating and interrogating the remaining Cygnus data.

Unfortunately, the Government’s evasive conduct during our campaign has already wasted valuable time and we are now entering a second wave of COVID-19. We remain determined to pursue data on the UK's pandemic preparedness because transparency is fundamental to good healthcare, good science, and good democracy. We aim to expand our campaign dramatically over coming weeks and months, and we are incredibly grateful for your continued support. Please spread the word about #JRcovid19.

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

Following recent coverage of our story in the newspapers, it looks like our campaign is moving rapidly forwards! We've been blown away by your generous donations - they really open up options for our legal team to push hard.

Yesterday we received a letter from Government lawyers asking us to drop our case because Matt Hancock says he's published "the report" into Cygnus. Interestingly, his lawyers don't state that the Health Secretary's report discloses all the data we requested!

Today we've replied to the Government...



Our reply goes as follows:

1. We have information from a trusted confidential source who worked on Cygnus at a senior level: There's a compendium report which doesn't resemble the report published by Matt Hancock, there's a specific report on how to prioritise care if we're overwhelmed by a pandemic, and there's individual reports from the agencies which participated in Exercise Cygnus.
   
   
2. Matt Hancock's report doesn't contain data which must have been reported by Cygnus, according to information from Government sources. For instance, his report doesn't say anything about PPE and it only briefly mentions "surge capacity".
   
   
3. The Telegraph has stated on 25 October : “The Telegraph understand that there are several subsidiary reports relating to Cygnus that have yet to be released... ”.
   
   
4. We applied for Judicial Review because of the risk that the Department of Health & Social Care would not make a full disclosure to our Freedom of Information request - and Matt Hancock's version of the Cygnus Report confirms our concerns.

Then we've asked a very straightforward question from Matt Hancock's lawyers:

"Having regard to his duty of candour, is it the Secretary of State’s position that there are no further documents and reports forming part of the findings of Exercise Cygnus which have not been disclosed to our client? "


Since Matt Hancock has been careful not to take this position in yesterday's letter, we think the answer is "no" and we're going to say that in court. There were 44 agencies feeding into Exercise Cygnus. One of them must have told the Government that we didnt have the NHS beds, ICU staff, ventilators and PPE required to deal with a major pandemic. We need that data.

The stakes couldn't be higher: We've heard alarming news today that the second Covid wave is forecast to be more deadly than the first. Our Judicial Review renewal hearing is listed for 19 November, so the pressure is on. The shambolic mismanagement of this pandemic looks like it might extend into Christmas now and we need genuine disclosure ASAP so that the British people, alongside NHS professionals and independent scientists, have the data we need to sort this mess out together. Let's make some noise!

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

5 days after Matt Hancock told Parliament he had published "the report" into Exercise Cygnus, and 1 day after we challenged the content of that report, the Telegraph has provided more details about what really happened during the pandemic preparation exercise.

The Telegraph now reports that Jeremy Hunt was asked to switch off ventilators for thousands of patients - but this is entirely omitted from Matt Hancock's report on Cygnus! Ventilators and ICU provision are key questions in any respiratory viral pandemic, and the report published by the Government fails entirely to address these issues.



This new evidence from the Telegraph reinforces our concern that the Government isn't being straight with the British people about the learning points from Cygnus.

Thanks to your support, we've made serious dents into the Government's stone wall of secrecy, but we are determined to continue. It's essential that the full Cygnus data is disclosed so that it can be independently evaluated both for future pandemic planning and to understand why we were so poorly prepared for COVID-19 after a national multi-agency training exercise.

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

This is important: Matt Hancock has told Parliament he's published the Cygnus Report.

But the Report he's published is the same document which has been in the public domain since 7 May. Why have his lawyers been telling us they couldn't respond to our request for disclosure since the last 5 months, if the report has already been widely available since May?

Today, the Guardian newspaper has again published our story, calling into question the Government's disclosure. The fact is that the report Matt Hancock has published says more about pandemic communications policy than it says about healthcare policy.

We're astonished that a Health Secretary is telling Parliament, the British people, NHS healthcare professionals and scientists that this is "the report" into Exercise Cygnus, a national pandemic exercise involving the NHS and Public Health England. A pandemic is a national healthcare emergency - Where's the healthcare data? Where's the analysis of ventilator capacity, intensive care capacity, NHS bed capacity?

We're increasingly concerned that the Government may be consciously denying Cygnus pandemic data to the general public, healthcare professionals and scientists, during a national crisis which has taken tens of thousands of British lives, and threatens to take many more.

We cannot allow politicians to act against the national interest and we've decided to fight on. Please spread the word: JRcovid19 !

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

Things are looking up! The Information Commissioner's Office has ordered the Government to respond to our request for the Cygnus Reports!

Read the story in today's Observer here: Whitehall Told to Release Secret 2016 files on UK Pandemic Risks

We initially made our Freedom of Information requests to the Government on 20 April and 21 May 2020. The Government responded that they needed to balance the public interest before making a decision. Since then, they've been "balancing" for 6 months, but refused to make a decision on our FOI requests!

It's worse than that - the Government opposed our application for Judicial Review by arguing that the Freedom of Information route was more appropriate than JR, while at the same time they were obstructing the Freedom of Information process!

The ICO has now decided the Government's delaying tactics are unacceptable. The Government must either give us the Cygnus Reports or else issue a formal refusal, opening the door for our brilliant legal team to take legal action to the next level.

This is going to be a tough battle, but it's incredibly important to challenge this small cabal of politicians and advisers who are refusing to give us the data we need to fight Covid19 in the UK. The scientific community, healthcare workers and the general public deserve and need transparency during this national healthcare and economic crisis.

Thank you for your ongoing support, and please spread the word about our JRcovid19 campaign. Exercise Cygnus is an important step in your right to know about the decisions which affect your lives.

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

We've finally received a response from a High Court judge regarding our application for Judicial Review. He does not agree for our application to go forward under the Civil Contingencies Act, but he leaves the door open for judicial review of "a later decision or at a future point or on different grounds". We're not sure what this means!

However, the judge has also said the Secretary of State for Health will have provided a response to our parallel request under the Freedom of Information Act by now, and on this question we're absolutely sure he is incorrect. Matt Hancock continues to refuse to provide substantive responses to our FOIA requests, more than 3 months after we submitted them. We think this is completely unacceptable after more than 40,000 British deaths.

Mortality rates have thankfully fallen over the summer, but we remain deeply worried about what the future holds. Scientists are documenting the emergence of a new highly infectious D614G mutation of the COVID-19 virus, and serious challenges lie in the winter months ahead.

We've therefore decided to continue to push for information in the public interest through both JR and FOIA. Regarding the JR process, we think the High Court judge has made 4 serious errors in his decision not to allow Judicial Review to go forward, and we have submitted grounds for renewal of our JR application (you can see our grounds below). However, we will now push harder for information under the Freedom of Information Act and we may ultimately pursue this case to the Information Tribunal.

We continue to believe this case is an incredibly important test of both the Civil Contingencies Act, which is supposed to protect the UK population during national crises, and of principles of Freedom of Information in a functional democracy. The last 20 years have seen a series of pandemics: SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola, and now COVID-19. We urgently need democratic disclosure of information to protect ourselves during this pandemic as it evolves, and from future pandemics. Secrecy is unethical, un-scientific, and it's costing thousands of lives.

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

Thanks to your generous donations, today we have filed and served our application for expedited Judicial Review against the Health Secretary. Three witness statements. Seventy-four documents. Four Key Authorities. 1010 pages. 41.9 megabytes of PDF arguing for full disclosure of the secret Cygnus Reports.

We have evidence that the leaked “Cygnus report” published by the Guardian is only one of several secret reports. In fact, the Government has a large amount of pandemic data from Cygnus which is informing the Government’s current strategy but which it is refusing to disclose because it’s politically embarrassed by its own previous failure to act on it.

We are arguing that transparency is essential for the scientific and healthcare communities to evaluate the Cygnus data and use it to come up with solutions to the current crisis. We are also arguing that transparency is essential so that the British public can be fully informed and engage democratically with the national challenges which lie ahead.

We have a team of high calibre lawyers who have a track record of holding the Government to account, working around the clock at an incredibly reduced cost. This is a groundbreaking case which can crack open what went wrong with #COVID19UK, and more importantly – give us the data to start making it right. We’re almost at our crowdfunding target, please continue to share with your friends and colleagues: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/jrcovid19/

Read the story in today's Telegraph here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/01/exercise-cygnus-nhs-doctors-legal-bid-force-government-release/

Kind regards,
@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

We've already introduced Tom Hickman QC and Jason Pobjoy on our CrowdJustice page. They're both providing JRcovid19 with formidable legal representation of the highest calibre. This is an update on some of the other individuals who are playing key roles in the fight for COVID-19 transparency.

Firstly, Tommy Greene is acting as an additional claimant in our case against the Health Secretary. Tommy is a young freelance journalist who has written for a variety of newspapers in the UK and abroad on subjects as diverse as NHS patient safety and climate change. He wants full disclosure of the Cygnus Report because as an investigative journalist he wants to hold the Government to account, and he believes the public need this information in order to assess and critique current government decision making.

Leigh Day Solicitors have provided outstanding legal support in putting this groundbreaking legal case together. Tessa Gregory is a partner at Leigh Day and has played an incredibly important role in developing this project. She combines legal expertise with a genius for case management and a flair for team building. She also has a track record of holding the UK Government to account at the highest level. Tessa is assisted by Carolin Ott - an immensely talented dual-qualified lawyer who has worked tirelessly on our case and has previous experience working at both the International Criminal Tribunal and Harvard Law School.

Finally, we're delighted to announce the addition of Hollie Higgins to the JRcovid19 legal team. Hollie is a dynamic young barrister with a record of academic excellence at both Oxford and Harvard, who has recently assisted Michael Beloff QC and Ben Jaffey QC in pursuing an important discrimination case against the Ministry for Justice. We're confident she will play a significant role in assisting Tom Hickman QC and Jason Pobjoy to demand transparency on Exercise Cygnus.

We're moving forwards rapidly and will keep you updated.

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

This is just a quick update on where we are with our legal case.

During the last few weeks, the JRcovid19 legal team have been pursuing the Judicial Review pre-action protocol, which enables legal parties to understand and properly identify the issues in dispute before going to court, and also provides an opportunity to settle the dispute without legal proceedings.

We have exchanged numerous “pre-action letters” with lawyers acting for the Secretary of State for Health. These letters have been helpful in formulating our respective positions but unfortunately the Government has continued to refuse disclosure. Leigh Day solicitors Tessa Gregory and Carolin Ott have provided me with phenomenal legal representation during this complex process.

We continue to believe that full disclosure of the findings of Exercise Cygnus is incredibly important to understand why the UK's mortality rate has been so high, and to prepare for any second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We think we have a strong case. We will keep you updated with further developments.

Please spread the word: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/jrcovid19/

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

We've read the Cygnus Report recently published in the Guardian, and we believe it leaves many questions unanswered. It beggars belief that a Tier 1 Exercise looking at a respiratory viral pandemic did not comprehensively address personal protective equipment (PPE) or ventilators. The leaked document also seems at odds with recent comments from Baroness Blackwood that one of the important steps taken in response to Exercise Cygnus was to "scale up" the supply of PPE.

Today we've written to the Government asking for confirmation that the document published by the Guardian on 7 May 2020 is authentic, but also reiterating our request for full disclosure of all documents related to Exercise Cygnus, including any documents showing conclusions relating to the supply of PPE and/or ventilators.

In other words, our legal action for full disclosure continues. Please spread the word: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/jrcovid19

@DrMQureshi
@JRcovid19 @54kdoctors @LeighDay_Law

Response to leaked Cygnus Report: Leigh Day press release

Source: If ministers fail to reveal 2016 flu study they 'will face court'