Baroness Harding is in charge of tracking you.
If you want a glimpse into the future, picture a Lovecraftian old woman yelling at you “STAY ALERT. CONTROL THE VIRUS. SAVE LIVES.” as she watches your every move — every minute, every second.
Also, picture everything you do being “traced.” You know, to know where the virus may spread.
Matt Hancock is axing Public Health England and will replace it with a new body to deal specifically with a pandemic as early as next month.
The Health Secretary will announce this week that the pandemic response work of PHE will be merged with NHS Test and Trace.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, the new National Institute for Health Protection will become ‘effective’ next month though it will take until spring 2021 to totally break up PHE, an executive agency of the Department for Health.
Tory peer Baroness Harding, the ex-TalkTalk boss who currently runs NHS Test and Trace, is being tipped to lead the organisation, the paper said.
It follows reports that the government has been frustrated with PHE during the coronavirus crisis, with Boris Johnson slamming its ‘sluggish’ response.
The move also comes amid fears of a second Covid wave this winter, with parts of the UK grappling with lockdowns as infections rise.
Meanwhile a senior minister said the new body’s goal will be ‘to ensure that Britain is one of the best equipped countries in the world to fight the pandemic’.
They told the paper: ‘We want to bring together the science and the scale in one new body so we can do all we can to stop a second coronavirus spike this autumn.’
They are going to be even more brutal, and shove even more restrictions down people’s throats.