Prime Minister calls for 'digital Dunkirk' in fight against coronavirus
Boris Johnson called on 30 UK tech firms to volunteer their resources to help UK response to COVID-19
Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on the heads of 30 different tech firms to volunteer resources to the UK's fight against coronavirus in what he described as a ‘digital Dunkirk'.
The plea was made in a meeting late on Wednesday night involving the Prime Minister, chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance, the NHS CEO Simon Stevens, and Johnson's chief advisor, Dominic Cummings, among others.
The heads of around 30 major technology companies in the UK also attended, including representatives from DeepMind, the UK-based AI company owned by Google; and, Palantir, the analytics company co-founded by Peter Thiel. Representatives of Microsoft, Apple and London-based AI specialist Faculty were also there.
"They went around the table, laid out what they were dealing with, what they were looking for, and asked: ‘What do you have to offer?'," according to a source cited by The Guardian.
Other major technology companies pledged service. Uber, for example, offered free rides for medical staff to ferry them from home to work (and back), while Amazon pledged video conferencing tools and cloud computing services to the NHS at no cost.
It comes on top of support from social media companies to ensure that science-based advice on COVID-19 is promoted, while companies like Facebook take down accounts hawking bogus cures and other quackery.
The result of the meeting will be seen as a success for Cummings, who wanted tech firms to pledge their "data, assets and expertise" to support the government's response to the outbreak.
Downing Street also asked the tech firms to allocate staff to COVID-19-related projects, possibly even seconding staff to the NHS. It wanted the companies to use their expertise to model the spread of the disease, and to help the government model the impact of potential interventions.
The UK government has taken a markedly less radical approach to COVID-19 compared to many other governments across the world. While Italy has gone into lock-down, Slovakia is closing its borders and states across Europe are closing schools, authorities in the UK believe that imposing radical measures too early won't work.
It argues that closing schools might make the spread of the virus more likely as, for example, high-risk grandparents are pressed into child-minding duties to enable parents to go to work.
The outbreak of the virus has been traced as far back as 17th November, and is believed to have started in one of China's notorious 'web markets' - markets where live animals, including wild animals, are held for sale, typically for slaughter, in cramped and unsanitary conditions.