The UK is “really unsafe” from future pandemic threats, a leading academic has told MPs.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said he was concerned that not enough work was being done to research the different viruses and bacteria that pose a threat.
Sir Andrew, whose team created the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic, said there had already been “decades” of work on coronavirus vaccines before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
But he told the Science and Technology Committee: “But we are not yet close to the starting gun” for other microbes.
Sir Andrew said: “We already know a lot about coronaviruses and how to make vaccines for them – there have been decades of research into coronavirus vaccines.”
“One of the problems we have is most of these other microbes are out there that could threaten us, and we haven't done any of that work.
“If it takes 10 or 20 years to do R&D, we're nowhere near the beginning of that starting gun.
“I think this is one of the areas that I see as the most concerning… Are we doing enough to look at the different families of viruses and bacteria that we already know pose a threat but don't have enough understanding of?
“This business takes years of investment to try to move it forward.”
He added: “If you think about defending against something unknown, which is obviously a really important way to think about pandemics, we don't know when that's going to happen — we're sure it's going to happen again, it's critical.” It may be in a year or it may be in 50 years.
“Then think about other types of defense we have such as military defence… I think the government’s figures (represent) almost £45 billion investment in one year in defense – we recognize that we need to do things in peacetime, even though we We hope we can do that.” It is not necessary to publish this.
“But for pandemics, we put a small portion of that into preparedness.
“And to me, we're really unsafe at this moment from future pandemic threats, because we don't have that knowledge base that we need to even fire up the gun like we did in 2020 — and even then it took 11 months for us to do that.” They have a vaccine.”
Meanwhile, the former head of the UK's vaccine taskforce launched a scathing attack on the government, telling MPs that ministers had “ruined” almost all of the expert group's work.
Dr Clive Dix, former deputy chair of the taskforce who took over as chair in late 2020, said the UK had not built on the successes of the taskforce, adding: “The reason we set up the taskforce is because there was no infrastructure to work through.” Industry, academia, government to put together what we did…what you've seen since April 2021 is the complete demise of all the activities that made this thing work, and it's literally gone.
“What we've seen is a whole list of incompetent decisions being made.”
He said the government declared the task force a success and then “destroyed almost everything that was happening.”
Dr Deeks, who is now chief executive of C4X Discovery, added: “We have less flexibility now because a lot of manufacturers have moved away from the UK because of how poorly they have been treated at the end of the vaccine task force.”
He highlighted how the vaccine deal with the French company Valneva was terminated before the results of the clinical trials were published, saying that the decision “almost brought the company to its knees.”
Meanwhile, Dr Deeks criticized the UK for not having a “strong relationship” with British vaccine manufacturer GSK.
Asked whether the UK's health security agency and government had learned the right lessons, he said: “Lessons were learned by a small group of us running the vaccine task force, and they have never been transferred into current thinking on vaccines.” the government.”
Dr Dix also criticized ministers for shelving key recommendations from the Vaccine Taskforce.
The committee also heard from experts working at Lighthouse Laboratories – which were set up to aid diagnosis during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Putting the Rosalind Franklin Covid laboratory at Leamington Spa up for sale was a “missed flop”, said Professor Dame Anna Dominczak, chief scientist at Health Scotland who was seconded to the Department of Health and Social Care to take over responsibilities for Lighthouse Laboratories in 2020. an opportunity”.
Professor Chris Molloy, CEO of Medics Discovery Catapult, who has been director of the UK Lighthouse Labs network during the pandemic, said the UK needed to reserve potential laboratory space “to fight the next war”.
