RNIB response to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s publication of its report on Module 1 Resilience and Preparedness

Matt Stringer, RNIB’s Chief Executive Officer, commented,

“The UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s publication of its first report, with recommendations on Resilience and Preparedness, highlights how woefully ill-prepared the UK was for the Covid-19 pandemic, and indeed any type of pandemic. In RNIB’s view this is particularly true with regards to the rights and needs of blind and partially sighted people and the report provides a hugely important opportunity for critical lessons to be learned to inform the UK’s response to future national crises.

“This Covid-19 Inquiry Module has shown how official contingency planning didn’t adequately consider the needs of vulnerable people, including disabled people, when responding to a pandemic or mitigate the disproportionate impact that the virus itself might have on disabled people. This unpreparedness was not just the result of a new and unknown virus but systemic with clear failures from government to learn or act on the experience of previous virus outbreaks when the accessibility of communications for blind and partially sighted people was raised as a concern.

“Despite the introduction of the NHS Accessible Information Standard in 2016, which requires health and care bodies to ensure blind and partially sighted people receive communications in a format that they can read, blind and partially sighted people still received shielding letters they could not read throughout 2020. This was unacceptable, and yet we are yet to be convinced that would not happen again in the event of a future emergency.

“More shockingly, [ONS] official data shows that in some age groups blind and partially sighted people were 40 per cent more likely to die from Covid-19 than the general population. Four years on, we’re still waiting for research to find out why this was, and how this increased risk could be prevented in future pandemics.

“We urge the UK government and devolved administrations as identified in the report to implement today’s recommendations at pace. It’s also vital that they urgently improve their understanding of the effects of sensory loss and account for this in policymaking and future pandemic readiness planning. And never again must decisions affecting all aspects of people’s daily lives be made without involving blind and partially sighted and disabled people from the very start.”