Professor Sarah Gilbert remembers the desperate lack of public funding when, in January 2020, her Oxford University team began researching a vaccine to combat a strange new contagious disease striking down people in China.
“If the Vaccine Taskforce had existed before the pandemic, we would have been able to move much faster. Now the taskforce is no longer working — so we are back to square one,” she told Andrew Mitchell, the United Kingdom’s international development minister, when he visited her laboratory last week.
Mitchell had just asked the leaders of the university’s Pandemic Sciences Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group if they believed the U.K. is ready for the inevitable next pandemic, for “when the klaxon goes off” as he put it. The answer is clearly no.
About the author
Rob Merrick
Rob Merrick is the U.K. Correspondent for Devex, covering FCDO and British aid. He reported on all the key events in British politics of the past 25 years from Westminster, including the financial crash, the Brexit fallout, the "Partygate" scandal, and the departures of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Rob has worked for The Independent and the Press Association and is a regular commentator on TV and radio. He can be reached at rob.merrick@devex.com.
