Some details behind the UK's vaccine programme dotted among this Telegraph puff-piece. Interesting about Germany, France and UK considering a coalition separate from the EU. And the early voluntary work done by the British biotech community in February that gave the UK a head start.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/29/scientists-realised-vaccines-could-stop-covid-put-uk-ahead/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr''The Prime Minister first sent Kate Bingham a text asking if she didn’t mind him calling her. Then a few minutes later on May 6, her phone duly rang.
“I want you to stop people dying,” Boris Johnson told her. Ten days later, Ms Bingham was appointed chairman of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, stepping down from her paid job as a biotech venture capitalist to oversee the development of a “safe and effective vaccine” that would inoculate the public against Covid-19.
Fast forward to today and the vaccination programme is the major success story in Britain’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
But much of the crucial work was done even before Ms Bingham took up her role, as she is quick to point out, with industry plans put in place as long ago as February to tackle a virus which at that stage had not, officially at least, claimed a single British life.
By Thursday of this week, almost 7.9 million people had received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, compared with a little over 1.1 million in France, while in Madrid, vaccinations have been suspended for two weeks after supplies ran out.
Britain’s success in acquiring the vaccines and critically rolling them out – vaccinations, not vaccines, as experts point out, save lives – also serves to highlight the failure of the European Union in doing the same.
Britain has been “nimble”, where Europe has not. The UK now has contracts for three approved vaccines for use and two more waiting for regulatory approval.
On Friday, Ms Bingham, whose appointment was criticised not least because she is the wife of a Tory minister, undertook a round of media interviews to accept the praise but also, with modesty, to point to the huge role played by the UK’s biotech industry before Mr Johnson had even called her up.
While the UK has a contract for 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine – all of it manufactured in this country – and another 40 million for the US-developed Pfizer-BioNTech jab, the EU is struggling to play catch-up, crying foul over its own deal with AstraZeneca and facing a shortage of Pfizer vaccine as well.
Ms Bingham’s Vaccine Taskforce had signed its first deal to buy the University of Oxford vaccine on May 17. It took the EU until August to submit an advance purchase agreement for 300 million doses.
The British success, said Ms Bingham (who has a first class degree in biochemistry from Oxford), was down to early planning by the biotech industry.
Experts on Friday suggested that measures put in place last February gave the UK a three-month head start in the hunt for a vaccine and, critically, the infrastructure for mass production.
“We have been very nimble,” Ms Bingham said on Friday. “When the Prime Minister called, he said to me, ‘I want you to stop people dying’.”
She protested to officials and ministers that she wasn’t qualified to take on the role. “But I remember they said, ‘None of us is qualified to do this. Just get on with it.’”
Ms Bingham is keen not to sound triumphalist. She voted Remain but recognises Brexit allowed the UK to go it alone in purchasing well in advance the vaccines most likely to succeed.
She said: “I’m not going to get into the details of the contracts but one of the things the CEO of AZ (AstraZeneca) did not mention is we actually started scaling up manufacture of the Oxford vaccine from February.
“So, yes, we signed the contract, or agreed terms, with AZ in May, but the work to scale up the manufacturing started months before that.
“It is that early work that was done by the industry – voluntarily, not based on contracts or requirements but a voluntary coalition of the different companies. That is what has ultimately made the difference as to why we are so far ahead on manufacturing.”
What happened in February is that the Bioindustry Association (BIA), the trade body for the UK’s life sciences tech firms, recognised early the threat posed by Covid-19.
Steve Bates, its chief executive, convened a committee and installed at its head Ian McCubbin, a retired senior vice-president in charge of manufacturing at GlaxoSmithKline.
Mr Bates put something similar in train when Ebola hit West Africa in 2014. But that crisis was tackled by public health measures and the urgency for a vaccine passed.
Last year, he saw the horror unfolding in Wuhan and then watched the virus engulf northern Italy. “We could see what was happening in Lombardy and we thought a vaccine is going to be the only way to return to normal,” said Mr Bates.
The BIA taskforce held weekly meetings and conversations with experts across the country. Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, remained in regular contact. The University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute was working on its vaccine and the BIA taskforce recognised the need to put in place an infrastructure to support the scaling up.
On February 15, Nettie England, the BIA’s expert on bioprocessing, was watching Liverpool, her team, beating Norwich when a plea went out from the Oxford vaccine team.
“We got an email asking for support to scale up their vaccine,” recalled Ms England. “At this stage, they could only make their vaccine at a 10-litre scale. That’s not going to make enough for clinical trials and beyond.”
That evening, she sent out an industry-wide SOS. By the Monday the BIA had assembled a consortium that included Cobra Biologics, in Staffordshire, and Oxford Biomedica, the two companies now making the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Mr McCubbin said: “The foundations were put in place before the [Government] taskforce came along. The initial activity carried out by the voluntary bioindustry community probably gave us a three- to four-month head start.”
Ms Bingham was quick to praise Mr McCubbin on Friday. “Ian was 100 per cent brilliant,” she said, “He is widely liked and respected. When Pascal Soriot [the AstraZeneca CEO] said we were earlier than Europe in placing the order, all this is due to the early work already put in place. We have compressed into months what would normally take years and years.”
Mr McCubbin was drafted on to Ms Bingham’s Government taskforce, ensuring continuity. The new squad had money to spend – so far £3.7 billion has been set aside for the purchase of 350 million vaccine doses – and Ms Bingham and her team went about evaluating the efficacy from some “200 vaccine contenders”.
At one stage, according to sources, France and Germany considered forming their own bloc to guarantee supply just for the two powerhouses of Europe. The UK, The Telegraph understands, briefly considered joining forces.
But France and Germany were reined in by the EU and the UK chose to go it alone.
The Vaccine Taskforce set about evaluating the emerging vaccine data.
“Kate’s energy and ability to create connections enabled us to get into the right rooms and look at the data on the various vaccines being developed and get a clear view of their strengths and weaknesses and so begin negotiations on delivery, volume and price much earlier,” said Mr McCubbin.
He added: “We started earlier with the right group of people in place, the industry experience working hand in hand with great Government people created a nimbleness.”
Downing Street has endured a difficult pandemic. But that phone call to Ms Bingham in May – and the events that preceded it – might just yet be Mr Johnson’s enduring legacy. ''
