UK much less prepared for pandemic than pre-Covid, used vaccine chief warns – Guardian
The UK is much less prepared for an endemic than it change into once before the Covid crisis after driving away jab manufacturers and relying on a narrow differ of photography, consistent with the country’s used vaccine chief.
Dr Clive Dix, who chaired the UK’s vaccine taskforce, advised MPs on Wednesday there had been “an entire demise” of labor to assemble certain the UK change into once better equipped with vaccines for the following pandemic, noting that every the activities had been “literally long past”.
The vaccine taskforce is broadly conception to be a rare highlight in Britain’s Covid response. It change into once led by the enterprise capitalist Kate Bingham and Dix, who took over as chair in December 2020, when Britain change into the first country to roll out Covid jabs.
Speaking to the Commons science, innovation and expertise committee, Dix said he and Bingham gave ministers a residing of “sturdy concepts” to make certain Britain change into once better prepared when the following pandemic hit, but these weren’t adopted or published. “[There were] activities already going on that had been stopped,” he added.
One other broad exclaim, Dix said, change into once the UK’s reliance on mRNA vaccines, the near leisurely the Pfizer and Moderna Covid photography, to sort out future outbreaks. “That’s with out a doubt upsetting,” he advised the hearing. “The mRNA vaccines will no longer be the be-all and prevent-all. They are going to handiest work if we know what the virus is and know the antigen,” he said, relating to the segment of the virus that triggers the immune system.
Past failing to make investments in a differ of vaccine applied sciences, the UK moreover drove vaccine manufacturers away by treating them so poorly, Dix added, leaving the country in an even worse position than before Covid.
“What we’ve seen is an entire list of incompetent choices,” Dix advised MPs. “We now maintain got much less resilience now because many of the manufacturers maintain walked some distance from the UK due to how badly they had been handled on the tail end of the vaccine taskforce.”
He raised the case of Valneva, a French company that mothballed a vaccine facility it had in-built Scotland after the manager cancelled its contract during closing stage clinical trials. On scrapping the deal, used well being secretary Sajid Javid said the UK ought to no longer maintain licensed the vaccine, however the medicines regulator duly licensed the shot. Dix called the feedback “incompetence on the very best seemingly level”.
A assertion read to the MPs from the Pandemic Sciences Institute at Oxford College echoed concerns a couple of lack of resilience, noting that Britain change into once no longer prepared for the most up-to-date mpox outbreak and “stays unprepared for an avian influenza outbreak”.
Prof Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Team, who gave proof alongside Dix, said the threat change into once in preparing for a future pandemic exactly like Covid. Whereas Covid vaccines took almost a one year to assemble, they built on years of predominant examine on coronaviruses. Work on dozens of alternative skill pandemic pathogens lagged some distance leisurely, he said.
“For me, we are with out a doubt unsafe at this 2nd for future pandemic threats because we compatible don’t maintain that facts gruesome that it is crucial to even beginning the gun as we did in 2020,” he said. “And even then it took 11 months to maintain a vaccine.”
