Last night sources close to the team at Imperial College said they had been “unpleasantly surprised” by the apparent lack of preparation for an outbreak revealed by Cygnus.

“We’ve been quite surprised at the lack of coherent planning for a pandemic on this scale,” the source said.

“It’s basically a lack of attention to what would be needed to prevent a disease like this from overwhelming the system. All the flexibility has been pared away so it’s difficult to react quickly. Nothing is ready to go.

“These exercises are supposed to prepare government for something like this - but it appears they were aware of the problem but didn’t do much about it.”

Documents also show that Exercise Cygnus identified potential shortages of personal protective equipment, currently in short supply at hospitals across the country with medics complaining they are being put at risk by a lack of proper protection.

In March last year the Northamptonshire Health and Wellbeing Board noted: “A recent national exercise (Exercise Cygnus) highlighted in particular the need for further work to be done to improve local arrangements around anti-viral distribution, community level protection measures, personal protective equipment [PPE] and mass vaccination programmes.”

A spokeswoman for Jeremy Hunt, the then health secretary, insisted he had been well aware of the need for more intensive care beds and had successfully lobbied for an increase in the NHS budget.

“Jeremy was acutely aware the NHS needed more capacity which is why he fought for and secured an £8 bn and then a £20bn increase in the NHS annual budget during that period,” the spokeswoman said.

“And although there will be many lessons to learn after Coronavirus, the fact that we do such exercises is why the NHS was rated as the second best prepared system for pandemic preparedness across major countries.”

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “The coronavirus outbreak calls for decisive action, at home and abroad, and the World Health Organisation recognises that the UK is one of the most prepared countries in the world for pandemic flu.

“As the public would expect, we regularly test our pandemic plans and the learnings from previous exercises have helped allow us to rapidly respond to COVID-19. We are committed to be as transparent as possible, and in publishing the SAGE evidence the public are aware of the science behind the government’s response.”