On January 10, 2020, “Wuhan novel coronavirus WN-CoV” (COVID-19) was assessed by Public Health England (PHE) to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID), at the time monkeypox, was also on the list. But then on March 19, 2020 they downgraded COVID-19 to no longer being considered a HCID in the UK. They determined that since January 2020, several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (overall low), greater clinical awareness and laboratory test being available. [1, 2]
This downgrade came just days after Neil Ferguson releases his “Imperial Model” predicting half a million deaths in the UK – a high mortality, contrary to PHE! Diseases on the HCID list include SARS & MERS.
“Was the quickest way for the government to take control of the coronavirus narrative to have PHE declassify SARS-CoV-2 from its HCID category? …Was PHE in more control of advising on the pandemic and matters such as PPE while the bug remained classified a HCID?”
Australia classifies COVID-19 as a “quarantinable disease”.