UK Government announces Covid-19 vaccine ‘taskforce’

The UK Government has set up a vaccine “taskforce” to accelerate the development of a Covid-19 vaccine.

The government’s aim is to be ready to manufacture a vaccine by the millions if a breakthrough is made.

It is hoped the new taskforce will help to position the UK as a leader in clinical vaccine testing and manufacturing.

Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary Alok Sharma made the announcement today at the daily Downing Street press briefing.

He said: “I can announce today that the Government has set up a vaccines taskforce to co-ordinate the efforts of Government, academia and industry towards a single goal – to accelerate the development of a coronavirus vaccine.

“This taskforce is up and running and aims to ensure that a vaccine is made available to the public as quickly as possible.”

He said the taskforce will be led by Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, and England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jonathan Van Tam.

It will comprise of representatives from the government, industry, academia and regulators.

Mr Sharma continued: “The taskforce will co-ordinate with regulators to facilitate trials which are both rapid and well supervised and it will work with industry in the UK and internationally so we’re in a position to manufacture vaccines at scale.”

However, the Business Secretary highlighted that producing a vaccine is a “colossal undertaking” and is a “complex process which will take many months”.

He said the government cannot put a date on when the vaccine would be ready for distribution.

Scientists at the University of Oxford are currently in the process of developing a coronavirus vaccine, with human trials to begin next week.

They said they will manufacture one million doses while their trial is underway and hope to have have the vaccine ready for September.

Alok Sharma said he has spoken to the Oxford team recently and the government was “continuing to support” their work.

Yet, Sir Patrick Vallance sounded cautious and added each project “does not have a high probability of success”.

He said: “Although everyone goes out with great enthusiasm and we hope they work, it’s never the case that you know you’ve got a vaccine that’s going to work.

“So that’s the first thing that we need to be sure of. The second thing is then the safety and it’s incredibly important that these vaccines are tested properly, that’s why it takes some time to get to the clinical trials and understand the potential unwanted effects of a vaccine.

“And then only when that has been done can this be used widely across the population and so those are the stages we need to go through.”