Joint Biosecurity Centre

Joint Biosecurity Centre (Fusion centre)
Formation	12 May 2020
Parent organization	National Institute for Health Protection
Leader	Joint Biosecurity Centre/Director General
Subpage	•Joint Biosecurity Centre/Director General
Intelligence services take over infectious disease management

The Joint Biosecurity Centre is a UK government initiative announced on 12 May 2020, to lead a new "biosecurity monitoring system". Tom Hurd, Eton-educated and friend of Boris Johnson, was parachuted in to take temporary charge of the JBC.

The UK government did not say whether the JBC will replace SAGE. The JBC will be based in the Cabinet Office, alongside the existing security coordination apparatus, and let the intelligence services take over responsibility for managing the alert system currently run by Public Health England and assessments by the NHS.

Leadership

On 5 June 2020, Clare Gardiner was seconded from GCHQ to be Director General of the Joint Biosecurity Centre at DHSC to take it through to full operating capability. Temporary head, Tom Hurd, has returned to his role as a "counterterrorist" at the Home Office.

Overview

The first job is to perform an allegedly independent analysis to provide real-time analysis about infection outbreaks. It will look in detail to identify and respond to outbreaks of Covid-19 as they arise. The centre will collect data about the prevalence of the disease and analyse that data to understand infection rates across the country.

Its second job is to advise on how the government should respond to spikes in infections – for example by closing schools or workplaces in local areas where infection levels have risen. Should UK government ministers decide to impose different restrictions in different areas and regions across England, it will be on the advice of the JBC.

The JBC is based on the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC). JTAC analyses intelligence related to terrorism and sets threat levels, which in turn inform ministers’ decisions on public measures and operational deployments by the police and other agencies.

Covid alert system

The government used a new Covid-19 alert level to give a pretext for decisions and to explain the level of disease risk to the public. There were five levels:

• Level 1: Covid-19 is not known to be present in the UK
• Level 2: Covid-19 is present in the UK, but the number of cases and transmission is low
• Level 3: a Covid-19 epidemic is in general circulation
• Level 4: a Covid-19 epidemic is in general circulation; transmission is high or rising exponentially
• Level 5: as level 4 and there is a material risk of healthcare services being overwhelmed.

The JBC set these alert levels. The government said that the UK was currently (May 2020) at level 4.

The UK government also said that it would consider whether the JBC should form part of an extended and ongoing infrastructure to address "biosecurity threats".

The UK government set up the JBC to look at evidence and "biosecurity threats" in England only. The UK government has said that it will engage with the devolved administrations to explore how the centre can operate most effectively across the UK.

 

Employees on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End
Clare Gardiner	Joint Biosecurity Centre/Director General	5 June 2020
Tom Hurd	Joint Biosecurity Centre/Director General	12 May 2020	5 June 2020

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Senior spy appointed to lead UK’s joint biosecurity centre	Article	5 June 2020	Helen Warrell Sarah Neville	Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at Edinburgh University, says: “The virus is not worried that you’re tracking its progress, it’s not going to change its tactic. Cybersecurity is not your worry with a virus. It’s a biological phenomenon.”

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