Plan now to speed vaccine supply for future pandemics (6 October 2020)

Summary

Slow-lane logistics shouldn’t stymie fast-track science, says head of UK government’s Vaccine Taskforce, Kate Bingham, in this Nature article.

Kate was appointed chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce in May. The main job of this Taskforce is to identify, manufacture and develop the most promising pandemic vaccines and deliver them rapidly to the populations that need them. COVID-19 is an opportunity to create a permanent system for supplying vaccines for future pandemics, quickly and safely; this process must become as routine and reliable as crafting the yearly influenza vaccine, says Kate.

Time and again, outstanding science has been slowed down by the ‘boring stuff’ — practicalities. That includes delays in manufacturing scale-up and legal approvals slowing pivotal US trials of one of my UK company’s potentially life-saving drugs, or progress hampered by logistics, regulatory disagreements and inadequate data disclosure. Often, the problem is not the science or the clinical trials, but the infrastructure. We must take pains now to make sure this does not stall future pandemic vaccines.