John Bell tells MPs UK must ‘prepare for the worst’ amid concerns about vaccine availability
The UK government has been told to “prepare for the worst” as researchers warn that a Covid-19 vaccine may not be available until next year.
Addressing the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee for its inquiry on UK science, research and technology capability and influence in global disease outbreaks, Kate Bingham, chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, said a vaccine was likely to be ready “early next year”.
She said she had submitted a business case for government vaccine funding amounting to “more than £1 billion”, but she would not reveal the exact amount that will be needed.
Bingham acknowledged that the timescale might be different for the vaccine being trialled by Sarah Gilbert and her team at the University of Oxford, which is ahead of the rest.
“I hope we can improve on those timelines and come to your rescue,” Gilbert told MPs, adding that trials were currently underway in Brazil and South Africa, where case numbers are high.
However, she said she could not give a firm timeline for when the vaccine would be available, saying this depended on when efficacy data was available.
“We are vaccinating in multiple countries where there is high transmission so we are increasing the chances of getting the efficacy results early,” she said.
John Bell, a professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “The whole epidemic has relied too heavily on assumptions that have turned out not to be true so my strong advice is to be prepared for the worst.”
He described the possibility of a second wave of coronavirus in the winter as “pandemonium” with a rise in seasonal flu cases as well as Covid-19.
Asked where he would invest money in combating the virus, he said it was important to “place lots of bets”.
“Hopefully Sarah [Gilbert] gets a tailwind and gets across the finish line, but I don’t think we can assume that’s the case. So we want to be prepared and ideally be ready to manufacture a number of other vaccines.”
Bell added that more money should go into the UK’s vaccine manufacturing infrastructure, describing it as “pretty lamentable” at the beginning of the pandemic.
“We don’t want to be left relying on importing vaccines from the US because I promise you will not get it until a long way down the line. So I think we do need to be self-sufficient.”
Bell also criticised the UK’s preparedness for the pandemic, telling MPs the Covid-19 crisis was “not a one-off”.
“Since 2000 we’ve had eight close calls, which should have made us wake up,” he said. “We’ve had three flu epidemics or near flu epidemics, two Sars episodes, one Mers episode, Zika and Ebola and any one of those could have blown up to be exactly what we’ve got now.”
“So this now has to become part of our national health security infrastructure,” Bell said of planning for pandemics.