Public Health England (PHE) will be scrapped as part of plans for a new organisation responsible for dealing with pandemics, the health secretary has announced.
to set up a body called the National Institute for Health Protection, which will also work against the threat of biological weapons and infectious diseases.
From this week it will subsume parts of PHE, the Joint Biosecurity Centre and NHS test and trace under a single leadership team, he said in a speech on Tuesday. Baroness Dido Harding, currently in charge of Whitehall's contact tracing operation, will temporarily head the new body and lead the search for a permanent successor.
Mr Hancock said the coronavirus pandemic had"shone a light on our public health system" and that he has"learned a lot about... what needs to change".But he paid tribute to public public health experts'"incredible work" and commended PHE's research as"some of the best that's been done" into COVID-19. The change is coming while the latest number of daily infections stands at just over 700 because"we must do everything we can to fulfil our responsibility to the public to strengthen public health in the UK", Mr Hancock explained.
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