Coronavirus vaccine 'could be ready in six months' - but widespread use may take longer

Dr Melanie Saville, Director of Vaccine Research and Development, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, agreed with his assessment, she told MPs it was a "multilateral effort".

She said that the 12 - 18 month time frame she had talked about would involve getting authorisation for a vaccine for "emergency use" meaning that the normal procedure for getting a vaccine could be sped up.

But she suggested that for widespread use it would likely take a year.

Professor Niall Ferguson, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London and a member of the Science Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which advises Government, said that long term a vaccine was the best approach because the UK could not remain in lockdown for the long term.

Earlier in the hearing Dr Richard Horton, who edits the Lancet, criticised the government's approach to tackling coronavirus.

He told MPs that Wuhan was a "ref flag" back in February and that they should have taken action sooner.

But Professor Neil Ferguson had more positive news.

The Professor, who himself had contracted coronavirus, told MPs on the Science and Technology Committee he was "improving day by day".

He added: "I don't think I knew what to expect, it was like rather bad flu, there was a couple of days when it was really unpleasant."

He said the measures taken by the Government could tip Covid-19 from a growing epidemic to a declining epidemic.

Prof Ferguson told MPs that current predictions were that the NHS would be able to cope if strict measures continued to be followed.

He said: "There will be some areas that are extremely stressed but we are reasonably confident - which is all we can be at the current time - that at the national level we will be within capacity."

He said the current strategy aim was to suppress transmission indefinitely until other counter measures are put in place, including a vaccine.

Prof Ferguson said widespread testing was needed to help move the country from suppression measures and lockdown into something the country can manage longer-term.

But he agreed with Dr Horton that the UK did not have enough tests to be able to carry out a "suppression" tactic,

He said when he looked back to January, he said "it was very clear" from Public Health England (PHE) that at that time the UK had "nowhere near" the testing capacity to adopt that strategy.

On the way forward, he said the hope was that once the lockdown is lifted, the infection can be kept at manageable levels.

He said: "There will be some resurgence of transmission but the hope is that by employing more focused policies to suppress those local outbreaks, we can maintain infection levels at low levels in the country as a whole indefinitely. It remains to be seen how we achieve this and how practical it proves to be."

But he cautioned against the assumption that the epidemic would decline during the summer months - like other coronaviruses.

He said it was "plausible" but perhaps not by more than 10% to 20%.

Regarding when the UK will hit its peak of Covid-19, Prof Ferguson said there was uncertainty but "if the current measures work as we would expect them then we will see intensive care demand peak in approximately two to three weeks and then decline thereafter".

He added: "We clearly cannot lock down the country for a year.

"The challenge that many countries in the world are dealing with is how we move from an initial intensive lockdown... to something that will have societal effects but will allow the economy to re-start.

"That is likely to rely on very large-scale testing and contact tracing. It should be stated that the entire world is in the very early stage of developing such strategies."

Prof Ferguson said countries were looking to China, which was lifting its lockdown, to see what would happen next.

But he added: "The long-term exit from this is clearly the hopes around a vaccine."