“She wanted to contact me. She knew I knew everyone in the industry,” Bates, a lobbyist for the UK BioIndustry Association, told CNN. “Kate Bingham told me, ‘We’ve never made a vaccine that works against a human coronavirus. It’s a long shot.’ ‘
Forced by a sense of national duty in a time of crisis, Bates agrees to set up his day job. The post was not paid.
By that time, the British government worldwide had one of the highest national death tolls, after dragging its feet to lock up restrictions, which were reluctant to enforce rules and followed futile attempts to track down the spread of the virus. . Its border was also still wide open, and the government threw money at a rotating group of private sector consultants to secure basic personal protective equipment (PPE) – an attempt that seemed more successful in causing controversy than in stockpiling to ensure.
But the government’s outlook to support coronavirus vaccines has turned into one of the pandemic’s most surprising success stories.
Nadhim Zahawi, the British minister of vaccine deployment against Covid-19, confirmed that the goal was reached a day early in a Twitter post Sunday. “We will not rest until we offer the vaccine for the entire Phase 1,” Zahawi wrote, referring to the priority groups set out by the government.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is celebrating the moment, calling it an “important milestone” and an “extraordinary achievement.”
“In England, I can now say that we have now offered jabs to everyone in the first four priority groups. The people are probably seriously ill with Coronavirus and are reaching the first target we set ourselves,” he wrote on Twitter.
The British government also plans to give a first dose to the remaining risk groups and adults over 50 by the end of April.
Across the country, football stadiums, horse racing tracks, cathedrals and mosques are used as massive vaccination sites. And through the National Health Service (NHS), the government can reach almost every person in the country to plan a vaccination appointment.
In the southern English city of Basingstoke, a fire station is being used for vaccinations. To accommodate the program, engines were moved outside, emergency deployment routes were revamped and a small army of soldiers, firefighters, volunteers and nurses moved in.
“It feels like a wartime effort,” said Mark Maffey, the NHS architect who led the transformation of the fire station and three other vaccination sites in the area.
Big bets on ‘longshot’ vaccines
Britain’s major scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, warned Downing Street not to solicit vaccine experts, but was careful not to repeat his PPE purchasing mistakes, and he pushed Downing Street to gather outside experts to to form the task force for the vaccine.
On paper, the unusual combination of government officials and current and former insiders in the industry looks like a recipe for conflicts of interest, but they were responsible for ministers and government auditors, explains Bates, who left the committee last month.
The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company was chosen because of its iron-clad commitment to put the British market first, which according to both parties meant that all doses made in the UK were given to the British government, and only doses were exported once the land provided. In return, the British government agreed to invest heavily in the manufacture of the vaccine.
“I did not want to sign a contract that could deliver the Oxford vaccine to other people around the world before us,” Health Minister Matt Hancock told British radio station LBC earlier this month.
Of the more than 100 vaccines developed worldwide at the time, the task force put about 20 on the list, based on how quickly they could be tested and made available. In the end, they chose seven based on the manufacturers’ ability to scale up production for the UK. These seven included the three approved so far by Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford / AstraZeneca. Two others from Novavax and Johnson & Johnson also showed promise in Phase 3 trials published last month.
Bates says bureaucratic rings are kept to a minimum. “I think a small group makes decisions easier and faster,” he said, adding that Bingham “had the hotline for the prime minister, also made sure that the commando chains were very short on the important moments when decisions were made.”
Go it alone
“It did not have the right thing to do, so the UK did not do it,” Bates said, estimating the decision “probably gave us at least three months’ advance work, which is invaluable.”
The UK’s decision not to join the European procurement strategy was controversial. Last March, Martin McKee, a European professor of health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, predicted in the Guardian newspaper that Britain would pay more and get fewer vaccinations by doing it alone.
“The timing of the pandemic … may provide an opportunity to consider whether an isolationist ideology is really such a good idea,” McKee wrote.
His view has changed in the meantime. “I fully admit I was wrong with this one,” McKee told CNN. “I give full credit to Kate Bingham … she did very well.”
McKee believes that the UK’s success is also due to the well – organized and centralized NHS system, which gives the country an advantage that many other countries do not have. The Basingstoke Fire Station can inject more than 1,000 vaccine doses per day. Nationwide, daily injections rose to 600,000 at one point. NHS staff, emergency services and regular volunteers are all starting to see their efforts pay off.
The firefighters have now trained to give shots in Basingstoke work under Steve Apter, the deputy chief of fire for the country of Hampshire. Last summer, Apter’s mother was hospitalized with Covid-19 symptoms and she later died of pneumonia. Her test eventually came back negative, but her symptoms meant she was isolated for days and could not have her family at her bedside.
“The feeling of helplessness was overwhelming,” he recalls. He is proud of how the fire department is contributing to the vaccination effort and can not help but also feel a sense of national pride.
“I have never experienced such an open sense of shared purpose as we see now.”
CNN’s Matt Brealey, Darren Bull and Mark Baron contributed to this report.