Scientists warn Britain is playing with fire after Covid cancellation

Experts warn that the UK has “fallen back” in its Covid vaccine capacity and preparedness for a new pandemic.

Dame Kate Bingham, former head of Britain’s Vaccine Task Force, said the country has lost “the lead it gained in the early months of the pandemic” due to its ability to access vaccines that can produce new variants of Covid to weaken.

And leading virologist Professor John Bell said there has been an “absolutely dramatic turn” in the UK’s success, not just in vaccines but also in testing and antivirals.

Professor Bell told MPs that the lack of oversight and centralized data for tracking Covid, which was cut earlier this year, means that the UK’s clinical trial capacity is “actually much, much worse than at any time in my memory”.

Dame Kate told the Joint Committee on Health and Science that existing Covid vaccines, including a new bivalent booster injection that protects against serious illnesses caused by Omicron strains, are “not good enough,” especially in terms of reducing transmission.

Her comments appear to have caused a political split in the Tory party. A senior MP called it “ruthless” that Britain did not learn from the introduction of a Covid-19 vaccine and questioned whether the failure was “deliberate”.

This was stated by the Chairman of the Selection Committee for Science and Technology Greg Clark. Tonight with Andrew Marr about BBC: “It’s terrible that we forgot them [the lessons of Covid] so fast. And Dame Kate is rightfully angry about it. She is a hero for what she has achieved. And she did it with great emotional and professional energy. And thanks to her and her colleagues and, of course, the efforts of scientists, to be able to be the first country in the world to vaccinate against a previously deadly disease, and then realize that we are throwing it away, is unprincipled.”

He added, “I doubt the word ‘forgotten’ because it seems that way and it’s a mystery to me … it seems to have been done on purpose.”

The MP for Tunbridge Wells also told Marr that he would speak to government ministers to urge them to “correct some of these mistakes”.

While the Covid pandemic in the UK has been largely contained with a booster program and much of the population has developed natural immunity by being infected with the Omicron variant and its rhizomes, there are fears that the country will not be able to respond to an entirely new strain of Covid. ready to need a new vaccine.

There are also fears that while some aspects of preparedness have improved since 2020, another pandemic – perhaps also caused by avian flu or another virulent virus – could be just as devastating.

Dame Kate told the Joint Committee on Health and Science that existing Covid vaccines, including a new bivalent booster injection that protects against serious illnesses caused by Omicron strains, are “not good enough,” especially in terms of reducing transmission.

While European countries are building up their capacity to deal with new viruses or new variants of Covid, the UK is “not much better at handling a new pandemic,” she said.

“We have skills in the country, but it cannot be done in a vacuum. We need an experienced leader who will join forces and try to put us back in a better position.”

She told MPs: “Currently, our vaccines are not good enough, we need to improve the quality of vaccines, sustainability, the ability to stop transmission, the way vaccines are administered, many things need to be improved.

“We need to combine our skills and work together, as we effectively did in 2020, to stay on top and not constantly look in the rearview mirror.

“What is wrong is that no expert or leader has been appointed to coordinate activities.

“People who understand scaling, clinical development, regulation… all of that is gone.

Dame Kate said although she initially thought the problem was “lack of public service experience … in fact, I’m starting to think it’s a deliberate government policy of just not investing in and supporting the industry.”

She mentioned the sale of the Center for Vaccines and Manufacturing and Innovation to the American company Catalent, which has since announced that it will not invest until 2024.

“It was sold and mothballed,” Dame Kate said.

Cobra Biologics, “an important part of the early-stage vaccine business,” was acquired by American pharmaceutical company Charles River.

The company has since announced that the company’s production will be moved to the United States.

Dame Kate added: “I don’t think we’re in the best position to deal with another pandemic… I think we’re a little better.”

Professor Bell told the committee: “I have seen an absolutely dramatic return to what it was before the pandemic, and if you look at it, during the pandemic we had a great environment for testing and evaluating vaccines, testing drugs and things like that. . the best in the world, and now our clinical research environment is actually far worse than it has ever been in my memory.”

But a spokesman for the prime minister dismissed suggestions that the UK was unprepared.

Health Minister Neil O’Brien told the committee that the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) now has a pandemic preparedness center at its core and that the UK now manufactures 75 per cent of its personal protective equipment, compared to a near zero percentage then. . Start of the Covid pandemic.

Ministers and the UKHSA have fundamentally changed their preparations for the next pandemic, Mr O’Brien said, including “regardless of pathogens” to plan for as many contingencies as possible rather than focusing on the new coronavirus or influenza virus.

UKHSA chief executive Dame Jenny Harris told the committee that the UK has a stockpile of hundreds of thousands of lateral flow tests (LFTs) that could be released should a new dangerous strain of Covid emerge, but they acknowledged that scientists would take it up. up to four weeks to develop a test for a new strain that was not found in existing LFTs.