Critical Analysis of COVID-19 Containment Policy in the United Kingdom

Abstract

United Kingdom (UK) is among the top ten countries that were highly affected by COVID-19 pandemic. The government implemented the COVID-19 containment policy with stringent measures including lockdown, quarantine of all travelers from out of the UK and isolation of all COVID-19 positive cases. The number of debates raised on how these measures exacerbated the existing health inequalities. Another discussion raised on how the UK dealt with the pandemic by prompting the change of policy at the speed which was only seen during the war time as attempting to contain the spread of the virus and attempting to attain the heard immunity. Two approaches were defined in the COVID-19 containment policy documents: “mitigation” and “suppression”. Suppression was aiming to suppress and minimize COVID-19 virus in the population by implementation of public health interventions. Mitigation was aiming to prevent overburdening of healthcare systems by flattening the pandemic curve and achieve the herd immunity. The public health measures were focusing on protection of vulnerable and high-risk people while allowing transmission in less vulnerable people. Interpretive approach was used in addressing the UK COVID-19 containment policy problem. The author searched the policy documents, debates, government statements and press news from the government officers and peer reviewed articles to critically analyze the COVID-19 policy issues. The author used Bacchi (WPR) framework in this analysis. The study established that UK government promptly tried the best to protect the public health. However, the COVID-19 containment policy in UK exacerbated the existing health inequalities and rose to the fore other socio-economic inequalities that were probably less of a concern prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 and failed to prevent the impacts of the subsequent waves. In preparation of any containment policy in the future, this study calls for the use of mixed health need assessment approaches including epidemiological, corporate and comparative and impact assessment that involve the society as the key stakeholder who is mostly affected by the policy measures of the top-down approaches.