UK concludes biggest pandemic simulation with virus targeting children

This autumn, the UK conducted Exercise Pegasus, the country’s biggest pandemic simulation in nearly a decade and its first Tier 1 national emergency exercise since Covid-19. Concluding last month, it involved ministers, all devolved nations, COBRA activation and every major government department.Participants faced a fictional novel strain of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) that originated on the imaginary southeast Asian island of Musiyana after a food festival.

Unlike Covid-19, the simulated virus primarily killed infants, children and teenagers, causing respiratory failure, brain swelling and occasional paralysis. The three-phase drill began in September with regional spread in Asia, progressed in October to a WHO-declared pandemic with school closures, hospital strain and street protests over social distancing, then escalated in November to national lockdown, non-essential business shutdowns, travel bans and fears of food shortages from potential pig herd infection.

Sir Peter Horby, Director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute at Oxford University said:

“The choice of an enterovirus is a good choice because it is a real possibility with real risks but is different from what we have seen before,”

Ministers tested both containment and mitigation decisions, including whether early travel restrictions could keep the virus out of Britain. The exercise followed Covid Inquiry findings that pre-2020 plans focused only on coping with high deaths rather than prevention, and that school closures “brought ordinary childhood to a halt”.

Lessons from Pegasus will be published next year.