Joint Biosecurity Centre

Joint Biosecurity Centre (Fusion centre)
Formation	12 May 2020
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 government has not said whether the JBC will replace SAGE, but the new centre will have a more active role in advising ministers than SAGE. 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.

On 5 June 2020, Dr 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 counterterrorism role 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 will be using a new Covid-19 alert level to inform decisions and to explain the level of disease risk to the public. There are 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 will set these alert levels. The government says that the UK is currently (May 2020) at level 4.

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

The UK government is setting 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	Director General of the JBC	5 June 2020
Tom Hurd	Director General of the JBC	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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