Vaughan Gething has admitted he hadn't read the results of a key investigation into the UK's preparedness for a major pandemic while he was health minister. In an uncomfortable and embarrassing exchange at the UK Covid Inquiry, economy minister Vaughan Gething, who was health minister from 2016 and throughout the Covid pandemic, admitted he hadn't read a key document relating to how ready the UK was for a pandemic such as Covid.
Exercise Cygnus was a three-day simulation exercise carried out by the UK Government in October 2016 to estimate the impact of a hypothetical influenza pandemic on the United Kingdom. It found serious shortcomings in how ready we were to deal with this kind of scenario.
Under the grilling of the committee's barristers, Mr Gething was asked if he "had any direct involvement in exercise Cygnus in October 2016." To this Mr Gething said: "Yes, I attended ministerial meetings on both days as requested. My deputy at the time also attended some of those exercises as requested. So on both of the days when ministerial attendance was requested we both participated.
