Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason the findings of Exercise Alice were not published following the outbreak of covid-19; and whether details of that exercise were provided to advisory committees involved in the Government's response to that outbreak.

The Department does not routinely publish reports on exercises. Exercise Alice was not intended to test elements of preparedness for a pandemic scale event, but to assess the United Kingdom’s readiness for a potential outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a High Consequence Infectious Disease. MERS-CoV, which causes MERS, is a different virus to SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

The recommendations from Exercise Alice informed updates to guidance for the health and social care system on the management of patients with MERS and on infection prevention and control for healthcare professionals. These were published as updates to guidance on MERS-CoV prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-mers-cov-clinical-management-and-guidance