'Hundreds more could die': Fears Scotland is not ready for the next pandemic after Covid-19

But half a decade on, there are multiple warnings that Scotland is not ready for another pandemic to hit.

The Scotsman has taken a look back at the Covid-19 pandemic, including how people were treated as “toxic waste”, how governments are not prioritising pandemic preparedness, and what lessons can be learned from the UK and Scottish public inquiries.

David Nicol’s wife Patricia died at the age of 46 in May 2020 after contracting Covid-19 while being treated for cancer at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.

He remains angry, believing his wife would still be here today if lockdown rules had been imposed earlier.

“The pandemic does put life into perspective,” Mr Nicol said. “The last five years have been hard with the wife not being here.

“It is not so raw now, but it is still in the back of my mind that if more had been done, she would still be here. Lockdowns should have come earlier and people should have stuck to the rules.”

Mr Nicol said a lot had been learned from the pandemic. But he said too many people thought the rules did not apply to them - and now he worries how this would impact on a future pandemic.

“I am angry because I am dealing with it, I know what it does to people,” he said. “The majority of people thought it wasn’t that bad and the young ones were acting like Covid didn’t exist - they couldn’t care less if they were spreading it round willy nilly.

“I hope that if something did happen again, that people would click.”

There are two public inquiries examining exactly what went wrong during the pandemic, at both UK and Scottish levels.

Mr Nicol said he did not think there would “ever be a final decision” from these inquiries.

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Alan Wightman’s mother Helen also died in May 2020 while a resident in a Leven care home. She was one of four residents in the home to be infected with the virus.

Her son is worried that Scotland is not adequately prepared if another pandemic was to strike.

He said: “Lockdown was a failure because everything that should have been done before it was not, and that is a criticism of both the UK and Scottish governments.

“We were not prepared, despite spending ten years preparing. We were not ready and lockdown was the inevitable consequence.”

March 23 is a milestone in the history of the pandemic, but Mr Wightman said he did not want the date to be “engrained in the national psyche”.

However, he hopes progress can be made in both the public inquiries.

Mr Wightman said: “I don’t share the criticism of the inquiries. I greatly support the work Lady Hallett is doing in the UK inquiry, and how Lord Brailsford is mirroring that approach in the Scottish inquiry.

“If something is not covered by the UK inquiry, it can be picked up by the Scottish inquiry. There was really good lockdown compliance the first time around with restrictions, but that was all wasted by the lockdown breakers in the UK and Scottish governments.

“Confidence was damaged and I am not sure that enough is being done to repair public confidence if this was to happen again. I think most people would still comply, but why is nothing being done in the interim to avoid making lockdown necessary once again?

“We need to be better prepared, because hell mend those in charge if we are not.”

Aamer Anwar is the lawyer representing the Covid bereaved families at the public inquiries. He said the next pandemic was “inevitable” and claimed Scotland was not learning the lessons it needed to.

“I know people want to move on, but lessons do need to be learned,” he told The Scotsman. “Take a look at care homes - people were being treated as toxic waste and allowed to die, or were signed off with ‘do not resuscitate’ on them.

“My father had Covid, and for people to not be able to watch their loved ones in their dying moments was cruel. It was barbaric how we treated people.

“Everyone was told to pitch in together only to realise politicians and leaders were breaking the law and yet not a single person in power has faced justice to date. All of these issues still need to be resolved.”

Mr Anwar added: “In terms of what we have seen over the last two years at the inquiries, it is shocking, and it will get more shocking as time goes on because of the allegations of law breaking, profiteering, people making millions on the backs of others, and frontline staff having to put their lives on the line.

“I am pretty angry and my clients are angry and upset. If we don’t learn these lessons, then in the next pandemic hundreds more could die in this country. The infrastructure is there and people are willing to put their lives on the line, but they are at the bottom of the pile.”

The lawyer said any reports coming out of the inquiries could not be left to “gather dust”, as he stressted the voices of the clinicians who worked on the frontline needed to be listened to.

Mr Anwer said it was important the inquiries recognised those who died did not do so in vain, adding: “We can’t afford for the people of this country to be treated in the same way and regarded as expendable. The Scottish inquiry needs to up its game.

“People like to have these things dragged out so evidence disappears and people’s memories fade, but these inquiries would be irrelevant if the people in power had done their jobs.

“The witnesses are speaking with absolute pomposity and arrogance and are failing to recognise they are addressing the nation who have the right to know what went wrong.”

So what are these lessons that need to be learned?

Professor Mark Woolhouse is a professor of infectious diseases and epidemiology at Edinburgh University. When asked by The Scotsman if there would be another pandemic in this generation’s lifetime, he had a simple answer: “Yes.”

He has some suggestions on what could be done differently, saying the public needs to be trusted more than they were during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prof Woolhouse said: “Day by day we are learning more about just how damaging lockdowns were, particularly on children in school. It is not just the loss of education, which was very serious, but the loss of a chance to interact with other children their age in a normal way.

“In my own job I saw the damage it had on students who ended up dropping out of university. For the younger ones, this is going to affect their life chances throughout their lives.

“I don’t think there is ever a good case for closing schools. I understand why we did it in March 2020, because we didn’t know how much the virus would spread in schools or how it would affect children.

“We reopened in August even though a lot of scientific advisors down south said it wasn’t safe, and I am very proud we took that different approach because there were very few problems in schools.

“But unfortunately we closed them again in early 2021, and that second lockdown was even more damaging for the children. I wish we had not done that, it wasn’t necessary.”

Another area Prof Woolhouse said he believed should have been handled differently is the NHS.

“This is a difficult one to get across because no one, certainly not me, wants to downplay the contribution the NHS made to saving lives, it did a tremendous job,” he said.

“Overcrowded hospitals were real, that did happen - but that was the minority. Bed occupancy rates were at record lows, we overreacted on a national scale.

“People who normally would have ended up in hospital were told not to bother the NHS and stayed at home, and died at home instead. We got that balance wrong.”

But one thing Scotland did right was the behaviour and compliance of the general public, Prof Woolhouse said.

“The public were most empowered during the Omicron strain because of the free lateral flow tests,” he said. “That made a huge difference, as people in Scotland started testing like mad - in one week 80 per cent of the population had tested, and 50 per cent had done it more than once a week.

“We can infer from that that people were changing their behaviour in response to the results of their test. Omicron barely took off and I put that down to the power of free testing.

“We need to trust the public to behave responsibly because the vast majority did.”

However, he said it was “remarkable” how quickly society had moved on from the pandemic, and claimed the world did not feel any further forward in being ready for the next outbreak.

“There is a lot going on in the world since the pandemic, so the government is understandably not on that ball,” he said. “But it is very important that we maintain a state of readiness, otherwise we will be no further forward the next time.

“We have moved on and we are quickly forgetting the ordeal we went through. We all hope this was the ordeal of a lifetime, but it could come back any day.”