Dame Kate Bingham, who led the UK Vaccine Working Group in 2020, told Beth Rigby Interviews … she does not believe the pandemic is “still there” when asked if COVID is now endemic. Asked if COVID was “over” as all restrictions were lifted on Friday, she said: “No, it is not over. It is far from the end. “So what we do know is that we had the Delta variant that was really serious last year, now we are in the middle of the Omicron and that could continue to evolve and the new variants could outperform the competition. “The question is whether it will eventually end up as a seasonal flu disease and we hope it will end up there.” Picture: Dame Kate Bingham told Beth Rigby Interviews … listened to a song by Lily Allen to face criticism “I knew it was more likely to fail” Dame Kate undertook to procure vaccines and find out how to develop them in the early days of the pandemic. “I knew it was more likely to fail and there were so many reasons why it was likely to fail,” he said. “The first thing was that we did not have a vaccine against any human coronavirus, so we did not have a standard or toy book to follow. “The second thing was that vaccines have historically taken five to 10 years to develop. The fastest was in four years, and that was 15 years ago, and we knew nothing about this new virus. “So we have so many reasons to be skeptical that this was possible. “And being able to start vaccinating people in one year, what we did, was not what we expected to do in the beginning because we knew that most vaccines fail.” How he became head of the vaccine task force Despite the imminent success of the vaccine, Dame Kate received much criticism for her unpaid role after it was revealed that she charged 70 670,000 to taxpayers for a team of eight full-time consultants. Her appointment was also criticized as Boris Johnson had not started the recruitment process. She also went to school with the prime minister’s sister, and her husband is Tory MP Jesse Norman, who was finance minister under Johnson and Theresa May. As a venture capital investor in commerce, he later boasted of securing 350 million doses of six vaccines and building infrastructure for clinical trials, manufacturing and distribution. Use the Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 0:59 “The only COVID / flu vaccine could be ready next year” Revealing what happened, she said it was Sir Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser, who first invited her to join a government vaccine advisory group. “My job for the last 30 years has been to develop new drugs to treat untreated diseases,” he said. “So when Patrick asked me to join the panel of experts, I asked him why, since I know nothing about vaccines. “And he said, but you understand the small business landscape, and it’s this innovation landscape, from which the largest volume of vaccines actually came.” Dame Kate then received a message from then-Health Minister Matt Hancock saying the prime minister wanted to lead the task force. She said she would do it, but only if she was only for six months, could she have a quick decision-making process and hire her own team. Use the Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 0:57 First vaccine test for Omicron “Lily Allen has a great song” “I had the whole rogue syndrome. I can not do it and I am not the right person,” he added, but then realized he needed someone who could run the whole program, not someone who knew everything about vaccines. Reflecting on the criticism she received for her ties to the government and whether it hurt, she said: “Yes, of course it did. It is very strange when you are not used to being in this world, to have a lot of people lying a lot. for you and you can not answer. “I mean, it’s really weird. Lily Allen has a great song, so I used to run in the dark with my head lit up listening to Lily Allen. “And it was wonderful. And I’m not going to say the name of the song in public.”
