Covid Inquiry: CMO says such response had never been planned
NI's chief medical officer (CMO) has said the scale of the response to the pandemic had never been planned for.
Prof Sir Michael McBride was testifying at the UK Covid-19 public inquiry on week two of its sitting in NI.
He said Northern Ireland had "never before performed contact tracing at the scale that we were contact tracing."
"We had similarly never tested to the extent we were ultimately testing in this pandemic," he added.
"It had never been envisaged."
Prof McBride said there was initially a "precautionary approach" but that "sitting and waiting was not an option".
"We had to plan and prepare for what potentially might happen. It would have been irresponsible to sit and wait to see how things pan out," he said in evidence to the inquiry.
"If you wait, and waited, until it actually happened it would be too late for any preparation."
Prof McBride said he was surprised to hear there was a perception that his role during the pandemic was more than just an advisory one.
He said that throughout the pandemic he was there to advise ministers on decisions, not to make decisions.
"I was very clear at every stage that ultimately the decisions were decisions for ministers and I have to say I'm somewhat surprised if there was any perception to the contrary," he told the inquiry.
As CMO, Prof McBride said his role is to advise ministers and to support managing how services and polices are rolled out.
The inquiry heard how this differs from his CMO counterpart in England, whose role is more independent from government.
To what extent this dual role became "problematic", especially during the pandemic, was probed during the inquiry.
Prof McBride, who has been in the role since 2006, said that while he "wears two hats" - managing and advising - his role means he is not independent and he is accountable to the permanent secretary in the Department of Health and the health minister.
'Ministers are decision makers'
However, he added that "the power and authority is vested in ministers".
He said: "Ministers are the decision makers. They determine policy which is right and appropriate. My role and the role of the chief scientific advisor was to provide advice.
"We provided that advice but the medical and scientific advice was only but one aspect of the many other factors that ministers needed to consider and the executive needed to consider before arriving at a decision."
Prof McBride told the inquiry that not having membership of the UK government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) was a "disadvantage in the early days" of the pandemic.
He said he agreed with NI's chief scientific advisor (CSA), Prof Ian Young, that full membership of Sage "was crucially important".
"We did have observer status on Sage, as did other jurisdictions," Prof McBride said.
"We didn't have membership. I do think that was a disadvantage in the early days of the pandemic because it is one thing being present and listening to the discussion and debate - it is quite another thing to interject contributing to that debate."
