Abstract
The importance of scientific advice to government gains greater recognition in emergencies but inevitably has to be done in an environment of uncertainty, with limited data and at high speed. Adapting existing structures is more effective than creating new ones in an emergency. Between emergencies, the UK has a structured scientific advice system, including Chief Scientific Advisers, scientists in government, regulatory bodies and independent expert committees, which were adapted to COVID-19 under the umbrella of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. These worked alongside networks of informal scientific advice, including internationally. Multiple sciences were needed, including from the social sciences and engineering in addition to clinical science and epidemiology, and these had to be integrated. A centrally directed clinical research programme helped provide practitioners robust evidence, with observational and interventional trials providing data for policy and testing treatments and vaccines. The scale of the emergency meant unavoidable tension between detailed work and speed, and between an integrated scientific view usable in decision-making and constructive challenge. While a final judgement of the UK scientific response will take time, everyone should be grateful to the thousands of scientists involved for the research, synthesis and advice, which improved outcomes for the public.
Highlights
Governments and other agencies need science in emergencies
Almost all major emergencies depend as much on human behaviour as biological or physical factors and the social sciences including behavioural science, anthropology and economics should have a central part in the response
In the current crisis in the UK, sciences from the public sector that have been central to the response have included virology, vaccine and immunological science, clinical science including trials, epidemiology and mathematical modelling, engineering, and behavioural psychology
Summary
Governments and other agencies need science in emergencies. This may seem an obvious point to the readers of this journal but the use of science in many areas of policy between emergencies is patchy and its importance is not always appreciated in all areas of government. Emergencies by definition require science to be undertaken at a pace much faster than is usual in academic work, using absent, imperfect or gradually emerging data They always need a range of scientific disciplines much wider than is popularly understood, or predicted before the emergency occurs [1]. This paper is heavy on structures for a scientific journal, because the complexity and scale of the scientific architecture, and how it interacts is often not fully understood outside government (or within it) It is a repeated finding in emergencies that adapting functioning existing structures, where available, is usually more effective that setting them up from scratch, especially in the early most uncertain and most fast-paced response
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