County tests its readiness for ebola outbreak

An exercise to test readiness for a flu pandemic is to be replaced with one ensuring Lincolnshire is ready to tackle ebola.

The county’s resilience forum was due to be one of 11 across the country to take part in Exercise Cygnus earlier this month to ensure plans were in place nationally and locally should a flu pandemic strike.

But the exercise was called off at the 11th hour by the Department of Health in response to growing concerns about the country’s readiness for an ebola outbreak.

The disease is widespread in west Africa and has already claimed thousands of lives.

Exercise Cygnus has now been postponed until next year and those who were due to take part instead participated in a live national exercise on October 11 to ensure robust processes are in place to manage any cases of ebola.

David Powell, head of emergency planning for Lincolnshire County Council, said: “There are currently no known cases of ebola in the UK and the overall risk to the UK remains low.

“We are confident that should that situation change we have well-developed and well-tested systems in place for identifying and managing infectious diseases.

“In Lincolnshire we are working across the whole health and care community, together with the emergency services, local authorities and other resilience partners to ensure that we have the correct procedures in place should any cases be confirmed in the UK.

“All NHS trusts in England have been sent guidance and are required to ensure they can identify, isolate and have the appropriate levels of personal protective equipment should they receive a patient with suspected ebola.”

Exercise Cygnus will be based on a 15-week scenario of a new strain of flu being reported in Asia, followed by the first cases in the UK several months later in travellers who had travelled to Asia earlier in the year.

It will test health and emergency services’ readiness as well as public services’ ability to maintain critical functions during a severe outbreak and allow key people to rehearse their roles in dealing with such a pandemic.