Coronavirus: Dido Harding to be short-term head of recent well being company

Baroness Dido Harding, who runs NHS Take a look at and Hint in England, is to be the interim chief of the federal government’s new Well being Safety Institute.

The company – set to launch on Tuesday – will merge a few of Public Well being England’s (PHE) pandemic response work with the coronavirus take a look at and hint system.

Woman Harding will run the brand new institute till a everlasting appointment is made.

PHE has come beneath intense scrutiny of its response to the coronavirus disaster.

It has been criticised for the controversial resolution in March to halt neighborhood testing and tracing of contacts.

However its defenders say it’s being made a scapegoat for failures elsewhere within the authorities.

For now, PHE will proceed its position in combating weight problems and working different measures to forestall unwell well being.

A leaked memo seen by the BBC, written by the top of PHE Duncan Selbie to workers, stated the purpose of the brand new Nationwide Institute for Well being Safety was to spice up experience with “a lot wanted new funding”.

The brand new institute will start work with fast impact.

The Royal Society for Public Well being (RSPH) stated the transfer to merge PHE’s pandemic features with these of NHS Take a look at and Hint raised extra questions than solutions, together with the timing of an announcement on the scrapping of a nationwide public well being company within the midst of a worldwide pandemic.

RSPH chief government Christina Marriott stated: “We recognise that there have been some severe challenges by way of our response to Covid-19, together with the timing of the lockdown, the continued ineffectiveness of Tier 2 Monitor and Hint and postcode-level information beforehand not being out there to administrators of public well being.”

She stated “a number of classes” wanted to be realized “earlier than options could be in place upfront of the winter”, including: “to do in any other case dangers avoidable errors in subsequent waves of the pandemic which is able to solely hurt the general public’s well being additional.”

PHE experience is ‘irreplaceable’

Prof Richard Tedder, visiting professor in medical virology at Imperial School London, defended PHE as an “meeting of a number of the wisest and most dedicated microbiologists and epidemiologists you might hope for anyplace”.

He criticised what he referred to as the “persistent meddling from on-high”, which he stated had “disenfranchised and fractured” workers “to the nice detriment of the UK as a complete”.

Prof Tedder warned the plans to merge current laboratory workers with NHS Take a look at and Hint had been “misplaced” and would “additional dismantle” the “irreplaceable” experience that exists inside PHE.

Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrat’s well being, wellbeing and social care spokesperson criticised the choice to advertise a “Tory insider who’s been answerable for the sub-par Take a look at and Hint system”.

She stated in a tweet that “complete transparency” was wanted when it got here to such appointments.

Labour’s shadow well being minister Justin Madders stated in a tweet that there had been “no transparency or accountability” in Baroness Harding’s appointment.