Ministers have “systematically dismantled” critical vaccine plans drawn up during the Covid crisis and left the country recklessly exposed to another pandemic, one of the most senior figures shaping Britain’s scientific response to the virus has warned.
In a damning verdict that comes just days before the official Covid inquiry starts publicly examining Britain’s preparedness for pandemics, Dr Clive Dix, the former chairman of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, said the abandonment of schemes developed during Covid now left Britain “fraught with danger”.
In an interview with the Observer, Dix said there was a complacency that mRNA vaccine technology, which worked against Covid, would be a “golden bullet” against future threats, despite warnings that it may not work against new viruses. He also warned that antibody manufacturing projects had been abandoned, which could have been used to help the immunosuppressed and vulnerable.
“If we take what the UK government has done, they have sort of systematically dismantled many of the initiatives that we had, when they should have held their nerve and taken them forward,” Dix said.
“We helped Valneva build their capability up in Livingston. We encouraged Novavax to come here and use the Fujifilm site up in the northeast and do their vaccine there.
“We had the vaccine manufacturing initiative. We worked with a lot of pharmaceutical companies to show them how good the UK was with our clinical trials network. Most of that has gone.”
He added: “The government has basically put all their money on mRNA vaccines. They’ve gambled recklessly. They have basically assumed mRNA is going to solve the problem. ‘Let’s forget about all these other vaccine technologies. Let’s forget about manufacturing. Let’s just encourage the likes of Pfizer and Moderna to come to the UK, then we’re covered.’
“That’s our pandemic preparedness. Quite frankly, it’s not just reckless. It’s fraught with danger.”
His warning comes as the official Covid inquiry, overseen by Baroness Heather Hallett, a former court of appeal judge, begins to take public testimony this week over how well-prepared Britain was heading into the pandemic. The mammoth investigation is set to roll on for years and expose decision-making at the top of government.
The leader of the country’s biggest union, Unison, which counts hundreds of thousands of NHS workers as members, said the health service was now less prepared for a pandemic than before Covid struck. Christina McAnea said: “The pressures were intense pre-pandemic – now they’re through the roof. The staffing emergency won’t ease in either sector without drastic government action.”
Last November, Kate Bingham, the former head of the vaccine taskforce, told a joint inquiry into pandemic preparedness by the House of Commons’ health and social care and science and technology committees that many initiatives set up by the taskforce had been undone, and that key recommendations it had provided had not been acted upon.
Chair of the committee, the former Tory cabinet minister Greg Clark, described Bingham’s comments as a “concerning testimony”.
Dix said he was concerned the government had now put too much emphasis on mRNA vaccines that were not a “golden bullet” to tackle future threats. “We’ve thrown away and just ignored the other vaccines because they had a few glitches, and they were no better than mRNA,” he said. “They were standardised technologies that we could rely on. They made some foolhardy decisions.
“The one that vexes me is the Valneva vaccine. When it came out, it was superior to the AZ vaccine. The Valneva vaccine was a whole inactivated viral vaccine. As a technology, it’s semi-foolproof. If a new virus comes along that we’ve never seen before, we just get it to grow in cells. It’s not sexy. It’s not modern – it’s pretty old-fashioned. But it works.
“And as a backstop, it is the perfect part of a pandemic preparedness plan. We’re just thrown it all away. It’s as if we’ve ticked that box and we’re moving on – yet the science doesn’t tell you that.” Rose Gallagher, professional lead for infection prevention and control at the Royal College of Nursing, said she welcomed the Covid inquiry and its findings, but added: “We cannot wait for the inquiry to conclude – we must be prepared now.
“We could face another extraordinary pandemic in the near future – perhaps a new disease we know nothing about.”
The public is split on how well the pandemic was handled, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer. Two in five (40%) think the pandemic was handled well, and half (53%) think it was handled badly. Opinion splits along party lines, with three in four Conservative voters saying it went well (76%), compared to 26% of Labour voters.
Former health secretary Matt Hancock comes out worse in terms of how the public thought the cabinet dealt with the crisis, with a net approval rating of -44%. Boris Johnson is next on -28%. Two thirds of voters agree with Hallett that she should be able to decide what material is relevant to the inquiry - something the government is disputing.
A government spokesperson said: “Our pandemic response plans are continuously updated to reflect the latest scientific information, lessons learned from exercises and our response to emergencies, including Covid, and are kept under constant review to ensure preparedness.
“The UK Health Security Agency was set up to combat future health threats, and the Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre will speed up the development of new vaccines.
“We are also playing a leading role in the 100 Days Mission – a global collaboration which aims to make diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines available within 100 days of the emergence of a new pandemic threat.”
