Publishing advice and meeting minutes from the government’s scientific advisers during the coronavirus crisis led to greater abuse of scientists working on a pandemic response, the UK’s Covid inquiry has heard.
Giving evidence to the second module of the independent inquiry, Stuart Wainwright – who was director between 2019 and 2023 of the Government Office for Science, which runs the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) – said it was right to make SAGE papers public, but that publishing only this advice and no other advice being given to the government was problematic.
SAGE papers concerning subjects such as pandemic modelling, the spread of the disease, the effectiveness of different interventions and concerns about at-risk groups were published weekly on the government website and pored over by journalists.
