‘Next pandemic is around the corner,’ expert warns – but would lockdown ever happen again?

Published

1 year ago

March 23, 2024

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Exactly four years ago today, Boris Johnson announced the UK’s first COVID lockdown, ordering people to “stay at home”.

Working from home became our reality and people were separated from their loved ones, while frontline workers tackled a new and unknown virus.

With a public inquiry under way into how the UK approached COVID-19, many have criticised when and how we went in and out of lockdowns.

So if another pandemic struck, would we have to lock down again – and how would it be different?

Sky News asks scientists and disaster experts whether we would ever be told to stay at home again, what lockdown measures would involve – and whether the public would comply.

When could a pandemic happen again?

COVID has often been referred to as a “once in a lifetime” event. But with more than six million estimated COVID deaths globally, the last comparable pandemic only emerged four decades ago.

HIV/AIDs was first identified in 1981 and has killed 36 million people worldwide. Prior to that, the Hong Kong flu pandemic in 1968 caused about a million deaths, and the Spanish flu of 1918 50 million.

Scientists warn global warming and deforestation are also making it increasingly likely that a viral or bacterial agent will “jump” from animals to humans and cause another pandemic.

“We’re creating a situation that is rife for outbreaks,” says Dr Nathalie MacDermott, clinical lecturer in infectious diseases at King’s College London.

“I know that COVID was very hard for people and we want to believe we can just go back to normal and I understand that entirely.

“But the next pandemic is around the corner – it might be two years, it could be 20 years, it could be longer – but we can’t afford to let our guards down. We need to stay vigilant, prepared and ready to make sacrifices again.”

Dr MacDermott explains that by cutting down trees in the Amazon and parts of Africa, animals and insects are moving closer to people’s homes.

And with rising temperatures, outbreaks of mosquito and tick-borne viruses such as dengue, chikungunya, and Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) are happening in parts of Europe rarely seen before.

“As temperatures increase around the world, even the UK will become an area where it’s possible for those types of mosquitoes to live,” she says.

How long would lockdowns last?

While there were three lockdowns in England, each several months long, Professor Stephen Griffin, virologist at the University of Leeds, argues there should have “only ever been one”.

“Lockdown was an extreme reaction to a situation that had already got out of control,” he says.

But if there was investment in mitigations like air ventilation in public buildings and generic vaccines and antiviral drugs that could be adapted at speed, he argues, lockdowns would be shorter and less severe.

Dr MacDermott says that until the government, scientists and healthcare workers know more about an emerging virus and how it spreads, “a lockdown would be inevitable to some degree”.

Professor Adam Kucharski, co-director of the Centre for Epidemic Preparedness and Response at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says that if you can’t contain severe infections and eliminate them completely – like Ebola in Africa and SARS-1 in East Asia – the only way to prevent a large disease epidemic is by heavily reducing transmission until a vaccine or treatment make the population less susceptible.

In the UK, it was eight months before the first COVID vaccine was administered and more than a year before it was rolled out more widely.

Would we be banned from socialising – and would schools shut?

Professor Lucy Easthope, expert in mass fatalities and pandemics at the University of Bath, says she would want to see what she calls a “nuanced quarantine”.

“Lockdown is never a word I would have used – it’s only really associated with things like school shootings,” she says.

With regards to restrictions on socialising, she stresses how important “community and connection” are for disaster planning.

The 2016 UK flu plan says public gatherings are “an important indicator of normality” and that “there is little direct evidence of the benefits of cancelling such events”.

Authorities should immediately prioritise creating “large ventilated safe spaces” for children, pregnant women, and vulnerable people, she says.

This would involve places like cinemas, leisure centres, and town halls being repurposed as community centres.

She adds the importance of people having a “purpose”, so being able to meet people socially outside should be allowed as soon as the nature of the virus is clear.

Similarly, pubs, bars, cafes, and restaurants should be allowed to open outdoors as soon as possible, she says.

While the flu plan does advise schools in infected areas to shut, contingency measures have been suggested for temporary marquees to host lessons – or just spaces for children to go.

“Lots of children don’t have gardens, so organised ways of getting them outside is important,” Professor Easthope says.

“For the marquees for education, you might expect to see three or four schools consolidated together.”

Another ‘pingdemic’?

The government spent billions on its test and trace system, which included testing centres, the coronavirus helpline, manual contact tracing by what was then Public Health England, and the NHS COVID app.

While rapid tests are important to stop people from spreading the virus further, and the app “had a lot of promise”, more innovative digital contact tracing may be required to avoid relying on another lockdown, Professor Kucharski says.

“The pingdemic was to some extent the NHS app doing what it was designed to do,” he says.

“But with the digital contact tracing infrastructure that some Asian countries had, you can limit disruption to those people at higher risk in a particular outbreak rather than reverting to blanket measures.”

He cautions that it would require “hard conversations” around privacy, but options include using smartphone location and debit card transactions to link people to identified cases.

In some countries, leaving quarantine would see people’s phones automatically notify tracers of potential further spread.

Would the public comply?

When public health experts gave evidence to the COVID inquiry last year, they said they were wrong to assume the public would soon tire of a lockdown and suffer “behavioural fatigue”.

Social psychologist and crowd behaviour expert Chris Cocking says it was a lack of trust in government that caused compliance rates to fall – not simply getting “tired” of restrictions.

“The overall message should be positive,” the principal lecturer at the University of Brighton says. “Because if another situation arose, where it became necessary, people would be likely to comply.”

He says if another lockdown was needed, the current Tory government would either have to minimise scandals over their own rule-breaking – or change hands completely to keep the public on board.

He adds: “If we had a new government, people would be far more likely to have faith in them because they would be less likely to say, ‘it’s the same bunch as before – why should we do it again?’

“And if they put more effort into not having situations like ‘Partygate’ or Dominic Cummings driving to Barnard Castle, they could appeal to the public’s shared sense of identity, and it would be possible for compliance rates to remain relatively high.”

From COVID fines to arrests made during Black Lives Matter protests and the Sarah Everard vigil, Professor Easthope describes lockdown legislation as “definitely bad” and “cruelly applied”.

Dr Cocking argues lockdown laws are largely irrelevant to people’s decision to adhere to restrictions or not.

“It’s not the laws in place, it’s whether people psychologically identify with the need to comply,” he says.

And for people who don’t, engaging with each reason individually is important to avoid creating a mass movement of “lockdown sceptics”.

“People might feel unable to comply with restrictions for lots of different reasons. But it’s a real mistake to lump them all together because you then identify them all as part of the same group, which further alienates them from the authorities,” Dr Cocking adds.

Would we be well enough prepared?

Four years before COVID, the UK had carried out secret pandemic preparedness exercises for both flu and coronavirus outbreaks.

A detailed report on the flu exercise was compiled, but public health officials have told the COVID inquiry that the coronavirus drill wasn’t acted on.

According to Professors Kucharski and Easthope, the more extensive flu plan could be easily adapted.

“The separation of a flu plan from a coronavirus plan is nonsense,” Professor Kucharski says.

“The characteristics of COVID were a lot like the sort of infection in a flu pandemic. It should have been a wider discussion about what the acceptable outcome was from the horrendous trade-offs we were going to have to make.”

Professor Easthope says in the late 2010s, she and other emergency planners identified holes in infrastructure that meant the UK “wasn’t ready for even a relatively manageable pandemic” in terms of health and social care. She also says stockpiles of PPE “failed” in 2017.

But she says the internet’s capacity to cope with so many processes moving online is both “enabling and unifying”.

“We just didn’t know how well it would perform, but in the end, it was one of the reasons we didn’t fall apart completely,” she says.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told Sky News: “Throughout the pandemic, the government acted to save lives and livelihoods, prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and deliver a world-leading vaccine rollout which protected millions of lives across the nation.

“We have always said there are lessons to be learnt from the pandemic and we are committed to learning from the COVID-19 inquiry’s findings which will play a key role in informing the government’s planning and preparations for the future. We will consider all recommendations made to the department in full.”

UK

Post Office scandal: Daughter has had ‘panic attacks’ since mum was accused of stealing

Published

3 hours ago

July 8, 2025

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Post Office scandal: Daughter has had 'panic attacks' since mum was accused of stealing

The daughter of a Post Office victim has told Sky News she suffered “dark thoughts of suicide” in the years after her mother was accused of stealing.

Kate Burrows was 14 years old when her mother, Elaine Hood, was prosecuted and subsequently convicted in 2003.

The first public inquiry report on the Post Office – examining redress and the “human impact” of the scandal – is due to be published today.

“I’ve suffered with panic attacks from about 14, 15 years old, and I still have them to this day,” Kate said.

“I’ve been in and out of therapy for what feels like most of my adult life and it absolutely categorically goes back to [what happened].”

Kate, along with others, helped set up the charity Lost Chances, supporting the children of Post Office victims. She hopes the inquiry will recognise their suffering.

“It’s important that our voices are heard,” she said. “Not only within the report, but in law actually.

“And then maybe that would be a deterrent for any future cover-ups, that it’s not just the one person it’s the whole family [affected].”

Her sister, Rebecca Richards, who was 18 when their mother was accused, described how an eating disorder “escalated” after what happened.

“When my mum was going through everything, my only control of that situation was what food I put in my body,” she said.

She also said that seeing her mother at court when she was convicted, would “stay with me forever”.

“The two investigators were sat in front of my dad and I, sniggering and saying ‘we’ve got this one’.

“To watch my mum in the docks handcuffed to a guard… not knowing if she was going to be coming home… that is the most standout memory for me.”

The sisters are hoping the inquiry findings will push Fujitsu into fulfilling a promise they made nearly a year ago – to try and help the children of victims.

Last summer, Kate met with the European boss of the company, Paul Patterson, who said he would look at ways they could support Lost Chances.

Despite appearing at the inquiry in November last year and saying he would not “stay silent” on the issue, Kate said there has been little movement in terms of support.

“It’s very much a line of ‘we’re going to wait until the end of the inquiry report to decide’,” she said.

“But Mr Patterson met us in person, looked us in the eye, and we shared the most deeply personal stories and he said we will do something… they need to make a difference.”

Fujitsu, who developed the faulty Horizon software, has said it is in discussions with the government regarding a contribution to compensation.

The inquiry will delve in detail into redress schemes, of which four exist, three controlled by the government and one by the Post Office.

Victims of the scandal say they are hoping Sir Wyn Williams, chair of the inquiry, will recommend that the government and the Post Office are removed from the redress schemes as thousands still wait for full and fair redress.

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said they were “grateful” for the inquiry’s work, describing “the immeasurable suffering” victims endured and saying the government has “quadrupled the total amount paid to affected postmasters”, with more than £1bn having now been paid to thousands of claimants.

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK

UK

Drones are sending ‘overwhelming amounts’ of drugs into prisons – and could help inmates escape, report warns

Published

9 hours ago

July 7, 2025

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Drones are sending 'overwhelming amounts' of drugs into prisons - and could help inmates escape, report warns

Sophisticated drones sending “overwhelming amounts” of drugs and weapons into prisons represent a threat to national security, according to an annual inspection report by the prisons watchdog.

HMP chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor has warned criminal gangs are targeting jails and making huge profits selling contraband to a “vulnerable and bored” prison population.

The watchdog boss reiterated his concerns about drones making regular deliveries to two Category A jails, HMP Long Lartin and HMP Manchester, which hold “the most dangerous men in the country”, including terrorists.

Mr Taylor said “the police and prison service have in effect ceded the airspace” above these two high-security prisons, which he said was compromising the “safety of staff, prisoners, and ultimately that of the public”.

“The possibility now whereby we’re seeing packages of up to 10kg brought in by serious organised crime means that in some prisons there is now a menu of drugs available,” he said. “Anything from steroids to cannabis, to things like spice and cocaine.”

“Drone technology is moving fast… there is a level of risk that’s posed by drones that I think is different from what we’ve seen in the past,” warned the chief inspector – who also said there’s a “theoretical risk” that a prisoner could escape by being carried out of a jail by a drone.

He urged the prison service to “get a grip” of the issue, stating: “We’d like to see the government, security services, coming together, using technology, using intelligence, so that this risk doesn’t materialise.”

The report makes clear that physical security – such as netting, windows and CCTV – is “inadequate” in some jails, including Manchester, with “inexperienced staff” being “manipulated”.

Mr Taylor said there are “basic” measures which could help prevent the use of drones, such as mowing the lawn, “so we don’t get packages disguised as things like astro turf”.

Responding to the report, the Prison Advice and Care Trust (PACT) said: “The ready access to drugs is deeply worrying and is undermining efforts to create places of rehabilitation.”

Mr Taylor’s report found that overcrowding continues to be what he described as a “major issue”, with increasing levels of violence against staff and between prisoners, combined with a lack of purposeful activity.

Some 20% of adult men responding to prisoner surveys said they felt unsafe at the time of the inspection, increasing to 30% in the high security estate.

Andrea Coomber, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “This report is a checklist for all the reasons the government must prioritise reducing prison numbers, urgently.

“Sentencing reform is essential, and sensible steps to reduce the prison population would save lives.”

The report comes after the government pledged to accept most of the recommendations proposed in the independent review of sentencing policy, with the aim of freeing up around 9,500 spaces.

Those measures won’t come into effect until spring 2026.

Prisons Minister Lord Timpson said Mr Taylor’s findings show “the scale of the crisis” the government “inherited”, with “prisons dangerously full, rife with drugs and violence”.

He said: “After just 500 prison places added in 14 years, we’re building 14,000 extra – with 2,400 already delivered – and reforming sentencing to ensure we never run out of space again.

“We’re also investing £40m to bolster security, alongside stepping up cooperation with police to combat drones and stop the contraband which fuels violence behind bars.”

UK

Post Office scandal: Daughter has had ‘panic attacks’ since mum was accused of stealing

Published

10 hours ago