UK concludes biggest pandemic simulation with virus targeting children

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UK concludes biggest pandemic simulation with virus targeting children

This autumn, the UK conducted Exercise Pegasus, the country’s biggest pandemic simulation in nearly a decade and its first Tier 1 national emergency exercise since Covid-19. Concluding last month, it involved ministers, all devolved nations, COBRA activation and every major government department. Participants faced a fictional novel strain of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) that originated on the imaginary southeast Asian island of Musiyana after a food festival.

Unlike Covid-19, the simulated virus primarily killed infants, children and teenagers, causing respiratory failure, brain swelling and occasional paralysis. The three-phase drill began in September with regional spread in Asia, progressed in October to a WHO-declared pandemic with school closures, hospital strain and street protests over social distancing, then escalated in November to national lockdown, non-essential business shutdowns, travel bans and fears of food shortages from potential pig herd infection.

Sir Peter Horby, Director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute at Oxford University said:

“The choice of an enterovirus is a good choice because it is a real possibility with real risks but is different from what we have seen before,”

Ministers tested both containment and mitigation decisions, including whether early travel restrictions could keep the virus out of Britain. The exercise followed Covid Inquiry findings that pre-2020 plans focused only on coping with high deaths rather than prevention, and that school closures “brought ordinary childhood to a halt”.

Lessons from Pegasus will be published next year.

Full article here:

Schools locked down again in secret pandemic drills
Exclusive: Exercise Pegasus imagined a virus deadly to children spreading around the world from an island in southeast Asia



News of the drill comes a week after the Covid Inquiry found the UK did ‘too little, too late’ to contain and mitigate the virus Credit: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images

telegraph.co.uk [slightly adapted, not all hyperlinks included from original] | 25 November 2025

Schools across the UK were locked down this autumn as part of a state drill to tackle the threat of a new deadly virus.

Exercise Pegasus, which concluded last month and involved all major government departments, was the biggest pandemic simulation exercise the country has ever held.

Those participating in the drill were told a novel enterovirus had broken out on a fictional Island in southeast Asia before spreading across the world.

Unlike Covid-19, which disproportionately affected older age groups, the new virus was most lethal in the young. The virus, “EV-D68”, was said to cause respiratory failure, brain swelling and – in rare cases – paralysis in infants, children and teenagers.

The spread of the imagined virus resulted in travel restrictions, school and business closures and mask wearing in the UK and around the world.

Ministers involved in the drill also had to “wargame” dealing with fictional street protests over social distancing, the Telegraph understands.

News of the drill comes a week after the second module of the Covid Inquiry found the UK did “too little, too late” to contain and mitigate Covid-19 in the early part of 2020 and prevent a series of ruinous national lockdowns.

Closing schools “brought ordinary childhood to a halt” and the decision to shut them had a “profound consequence” on children, it said.


‘A realistic pandemic scenario’

Exercise Pegasus was designated a “Tier 1” national emergency exercise, meaning it involved ministerial participation, all devolved nations and activation of COBRA, the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms.

It ran in three parts in September, October and November this year and imagined a novel version of EV-D68 had triggered a pandemic.

It’s key purpose was “to simulate a realistic pandemic scenario, and is the first of its kind in nearly a decade,” according to a NHS briefing document.

The real EV-D68 is a respiratory virus first isolated in California in 1962, which has gained global traction. As well as respiratory disease and meningitis, it can cause a polio-like paralysis in children known as acute flaccid paralysis.

“The choice of an enterovirus is a good choice because it is a real possibility with real risks but is different from what we have seen before,” said Sir Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infections and Global Health at the University of Oxford and the Director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute.

“The big question for me would be, has anything really changed since Covid?” added Sir Peter, who was not involved in the exercise. “Have the systems changed and were the responses different?”

In Phase 1 of the Exercise Pegasus, participants were told an outbreak of a novel enterovirus had occurred on the fictional Island of “Musiyana” in southeast Asia and that it had already spread to Malaysia and Singapore.

The outbreak followed a local “food festival”, a child had died on 17 September and the virus was “considered to have pandemic potential”.

It is not clear if travel restrictions were recommended by UK ministers at this point in an attempt to prevent the virus getting to Britain, but the Telegraph understands a range of travel restrictions were in place by the end of the exercise.

In Phase 2 of the simulation, the World Health Organization (WHO) formally declared a pandemic, schools were closed and hospitals started to come under pressure. Protests over social distancing also broke out.

COBRA was told that, like Covid, the virus can be spread through respiratory aerosols and droplets and that “asymptomatic spread cannot be excluded”.

In Phase 3, a national lockdown was declared and non-essential businesses ordered to close. There were also fears that the virus – thought to be carried in pigs – could also cause food shortages if UK herds became infected.

The first part of the Covid Inquiry found the UK’s pandemic plan ahead of that outbreak was flawed in that it failed to consider preventing a novel virus sweeping across Britain in the first place.

“It focused on only one type of pandemic, failed adequately to consider prevention or proportionality of response, and paid insufficient attention to the economic and social consequences of pandemic response,” said the Inquiry.

“When it was said that the UK was well prepared before the Covid-19 pandemic, this meant at the time that the UK should have been able to manage the deaths of [837,500] people – not that it was prepared to prevent them,” it added.

It is not clear what measures ministers ordered during the Exercise Pegasus to try and prevent the virus getting to the UK, but the exercise was designed to test government decision making around “containment” as well as “mitigation”, say government documents.

Closing schools during the Covid-19 lockdowns “brought ordinary childhood to a halt,” the second part of the Covid Inquiry found. No plans had been made ahead of the pandemic that would have allowed for a quick switch to remote learning.

“The decisions to close schools and early years provision to most children and to implement a lockdown were steps taken to protect the adult population. They brought ordinary childhood to a halt,” concluded the Inquiry.

In Exercise Pegasus, the imagined virus was most lethal to children – presenting ministers with a different challenge around schools.

It is not thought that any ministers walked out during the exercise as happened during Exercise Cygnus in 2016, when the then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt downed tools when it became clear hospitals would be overrun and he was asked to decide who should get care and who should not.

“The hospitals were full and Hunt was asked to make the call as part of the exercise. But instead of doing so he basically said ‘I’m not playing any more’. People were very cross as it mucked up the exercise,” recalled one observer.

Mr Hunt said he had paused the exercise to argue that such decisions indicated insufficient planning and maintains that his action prompted improvements in the UK’s pandemic planning protocols ahead of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The Department of Health and Social Care is expected to publish a report about the drill next year.

A Government spokesperson emphasised for the avoidance of doubt that the lockdowns were not real but a table to exercise, and said: “Exercise Pegasus concluded this autumn and was the largest simulation of a pandemic in UK history, involving every government department, all four nations, and many government agencies.

“A fictional scenario was designed to test participants and improve public bodies’ ability to respond to a pandemic.

“Learnings will be taken to strengthen the UK’s ability to protect the public, and findings will be published as part of the Government’s commitment to transparency.”

Trudie Lang, Professor of Global Health Research at The University of Oxford, said pandemic drills like Exercise Pegasus were now being held around the world and that there was a need to better share the results and findings.

“These exercises are really important as they throw up barriers and innovations you might not have foreseen but they should be made open and shared internationally in a curateable form,” she said.