The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has been stood down in a clear sign that the Government believes the Covid crisis is over.
Although the group “stands ready if required”, it will no longer meet regularly – the first time it has halted its ongoing response since January 2020.
The decision was taken after the Government acknowledged that Britain has entered a new phase of its response and followed the lifting of all remaining legal restrictions in England under Downing Street’s Living With Covid plan.
The devolved nations have their own scientific advisory groups and are emerging from the pandemic on slightly different timelines.
The Telegraph understands that the Government will continue to receive Covid advice from other expert bodies such as the UK Health Security Agency and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, as well as from Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Adviser and Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer.
‘Over-reliance on modelling’
Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “The standing down of Sage signifies the end of the pandemic in the UK.
“This is a remarkable turnabout of events given that just before Christmas, Sage advisers were warning infections could hit two million per day and were pushing for further restrictions.
“The Government will need to review whether Sage is fit for purpose when it comes to pandemics, particularly given its lack of clinical input and its overreliance on modelling – which we now know is no more than ‘guesswork’ – and its tendency to fixate on a particular set of assumptions.”
Sage was first established in 2009 to tackle the swine flu pandemic and has been activated 10 times since then. But it has faced criticism over the past year for over-reliance on modelling, which has been repeatedly shown to be wrong.
In mid-December, Sage urged the government to go further than “Plan B” restrictions and reintroduce “more stringent measures” to cope with the omicron wave, after models warned hospitalisations could peak between 3,000 and 10,000 a day and deaths at between 600 and 6,000 a day.
The advisers suggested reintroducing measures “equivalent to those in place after step two or step one of the roadmap in England”, which would have placed Britain back in lockdown conditions.
However, after taking advice from outside Sage, the Government chose not to bring in restrictions and deaths peaked at 306 on Jan 21 while daily hospital admissions never rose beyond 2,615.
