COVID-19

What then does ethical preparedness mean? There is still a great deal of work to do to explore the full scope of such a concept. However, drawing on the lessons from COVID, we suggest the following three elements are likely to play an important role.

The UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator is currently looking to commission research reviews on four topics related to the unequal impacts of the pandemic, self-reported data collection and international aid, and is recruiting a Communications and Public Affairs Manager.

In relation to pandemic policy in England, the absence of sustained ethical discourse at the level of government has created fundamental challenges to establishing how responsibility should be understood—practically, and as a matter of principle.

Guest post from Shaun Griffin and Hugh Whittall, UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator.

Around this time last year, I packed up my office laptop and cheerily bid farewell to colleagues, assuring them I’d see them “in a few weeks” once lockdown was over. Reader, it was not a few weeks. Over a year to the day, I have yet to return to any office and indeed, having joined the Nuffield Council a couple of months into lockdown, have yet to meet many of my new colleagues in the flesh.

The prospect of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 is good news for everyone towards the end of a grim year. Of course, caution is still advisable with as yet no certainty as to how long the vaccine might work or whether there might be adverse side effects for certain groups. There are also a host of ethical issues that need to be addressed.

“It is the miracle jab that promises hope of an end to the pandemic and a longed-for return to normality.” So begins a piece by The Daily Mail’s science correspondent Victoria Allen this week...

Back in March discussion started as to whether it would be appropriate to consider challenge trials to speed up vaccine development during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The introduction of compulsory mask policies in the UK has prompted a mixture of compliance and contention.

Just at the point where vaccine trials are showing promise, levels of infection circulating in the general population in the UK are relatively low. This is obviously good news from many perspectives – but makes the next stage of testing more difficult. Is one possible answer human challenge trials?

Guest post: This blog is an extended version of a presentation given by Professor Bobbie Farsides at last week’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ webinar “Ethical implications of antibody testing and 'immunity certification'."

In order to exit lockdown safely, the UK will need to be able to identify virus hotspots and have a robust track and trace process in place to ensure that people who might be infected know that they need to self-isolate.

In most emergencies, affected communities play a key role in initiating and leading response activities – in stark contrast to the stereotype of people overwhelmed by the emergency waiting helplessly for help from outsiders.

A mantra of recent government policy reporting in recent weeks is that they are only following the science. The science recommended the lockdown, and the science will let us know when it can be relaxed, apparently. It tells us what tests need to be done for whom and what protective equipment is needed for whom. How exactly can it do this?

In their recent statement on digital contact tracing, NHSX, the NHS Unit leading digital transformation of the NHS, acknowledge that the public will need to trust this new technology for it to be effective in tackling COVID-19, and that NHSX will seek to earn that trust by working with ‘transparent standards of privacy, security and ethics’.

Debate about how to exit from lockdown is increasing. What evidence is there that the ethical dimension of that process has been considered? So far there is little or no such evidence.

It’s amazing how much (and how many people) we trust in and how reliant we are on trust. Imagine a world in which you never trusted your doctor to try to do her best for you. In an emergency such as the present one when things are so uncertain trust matters even more. But you cannot just command trust (‘Trust me I am an expert/Minister/whatever’) and when trust has been built up over time it is very easy for it to be destroyed in an instant.

Two weeks ago, I came down with a respiratory infection that produced a high fever and a persistent, dry cough. Following the current official guidance, I went into isolation and my family entered quarantine...

At some point in this terrible pandemic doctors will have to make some unbelievably difficult life and death decisions. It is the point at which the demand for the intensive life saving resources outstrips their supply. At that point doctors will have to decide who receives care and who does not. No one should have to make such decisions, and yet they will have to be made.

A brief analysis of what the Government is doing now to contain COVID-19, the possible restrictive measures that they might take to prevent and control the spread, why these might be justified, and why it is important that the Government sets out publicly – and early - the case for implementing such restrictive approaches.

So what relevance has our report to the enormous challenges being posed to health systems and governments the world over by COVID-19? Unsurprisingly, quite a lot.