UKHSA publishes Health Security Risk Assessment to inform pandemic preparedness

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has released its first Health Security Risk Assessment, which assesses the most significant health security risks facing the UK over the next five years.

The report complements the Cabinet Office’s existing National Risk Register by offering a more detailed view of health-related threats and provides a systematic framework to understand the impact of infectious diseases, environmental hazards, and other acute health emergencies.

While high potential impact and assessed likelihood that respiratory infections with pandemic potential remain the greatest threat, the wider health hazards span seven themes: bloodborne and sexually transmitted, contact, gastrointestinal, respiratory, vector-borne, environmental, and combined events.

A number of the scenarios detailed in the report, including a novel coronavirus pandemic, declining childhood immunisation coverage, and extreme heat, have already been witnessed in recent years while other scenarios focus on the potential for known health threats to have a greater impact in future.

Under one scenario, a new strain of influenza arrives in the UK and in multiple waves over the course of two years leads to symptomatic infections in over half of the UK population, 4% of whom require hospital care. This outbreak, much like the COVID-19 pandemic, would have substantial wider healthcare impacts as healthcare workers become ill and/or are diverted to the response.

In another scenario, a series of warmer-than-expected summers in continental Europe results in the Aedes albopictus mosquito becoming established in London and south coast ports, leading to the first locally acquired cases of dengue in the UK, some requiring hospital care.

All of the scenarios presented are assessed for likelihood and potential impact on healthcare, the economy, and wider society.