I was truly frightened for a moment until I reread the news article. Nadine Dorries is a health minister. She’s not Minister for Health.
Hopefully this is reassuring: The Ministers and Secretaries of State are not usually experts in their field. Nadine Dorries etc are being advised by teams of hundreds of extremely experienced civil servants, supported by thousands more, within their ministries/departments, and in the case of her department, agencies like Public Health England, which also has a lot of expertise and loads of high experienced doctors (as in consultant level) and scientists.
When the Ministers and even the PM announce measures, they've not been sitting up at night reading all the academic papers themselves and making risk decisions and then figuring out how to actually make that happen! Instead the ministers may give some policy guidance (like "make Brexit work", thanks for that one, very helpful; or "we need to reform the education system"). Then the civil servants draw up some options, in detail, based on best scientific advice and their expert knowledge of how to actually deploy.
In the case of Covid-19 the ministers will have given some preferences (maybe "slow this down but try not to bugger up the economy") but as a health emergency will be even more reliant on previous emergency plans being adapted for the new situation, again by the civil servants.
The plans are worked up, then go through increasingly senior levels, until a few options are selected and presented to the minister. The minister listens (hopefully), and reads the briefing papers (these can be anything from 2 pages, for those who struggle with focus, to 100 page docs for ministers who like detail). The civil servants will give pros and cons of each, and likely impact. Then sometimes the way forward is clear and they just go "ok"; if it's closer, or politically sensitive, then the minister has to make the decision between the choices presented. Then the civil service delivery bit steps in and the people who make things happen, as opposed to policy, go and make it happen.
Think about it - whenever there's a reshuffle, the new minister isn't chosen because they've got a degree in transport planning, or education (though CS often wish they did), nor do they need to spend years learning their new brief. They just slide in and start receiving the briefs and advice, and make decisions, and if they've got particular policies in mind, they'll ask the CS to work them up into plans to see if they'd actually work on the ground. And when a minister takes a question in Parliament, they haven't written the answer they give - the civil servants and agencies have; same with any non-political speeches at events.
In an emergency you could actually take out all the ministers, and the ministries would keep ticking over. Or you just slide in a new minister and life continues as normal.