This is an unmissable insider view into how the Vaccine Taskforce beat the odds and delivered the scientific miracle we all waited for. An excellent read… Capturing the exceptional pace and energy of everyone involved in discovering and producing effective therapies against Covid-19. In other words, it's not possible to even get to the starting block in the process of fixing a problem. It is also a fascinating insight into dysfunctionality in the Government and exposes how even in a time of national emergency the Civil Service and politicians couldn't step up to the plate.

Interesting insider insights contained in the book are: Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Michael Gove do not come off badly in this book. I understand why she did this as the reason the vaccine task force succeeded was because Bingham created a high-performance team and she had to describe how this was done as such teams do not materialise of their own accord. For example, the vaccine task force was not able to build a bulk mRNA manufacturing capability in the UK.I fear it's impossible to reconcile the needs of government - paralysis inducing transparency, accountability and risk reduction - with private sector practice, which has similar needs but somehow much less paralysing. Dame Kate Bingham served as the Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, on a seven-month unpaid secondment, steering a team of experts to deliver the world’s fastest Covid-19 vaccination programme. Covid is still spreading, probably mutating and just waiting for the next advantageous circumstance to jump back into wider global populations. Her clarity of thought and action in a such a dark and turbulent time is a seam running through the book, and I know for certain that her efforts saved many lives. I spoke with her frequently through 2020 as we battled logistical headwinds and the media storms in development of the Oxford vaccine and was always better for our chats, absorbing the positive energy that she emanates and benefiting from her wisdom.

Now, nearly every adult in Britain has had the jab, lockdowns have ended and we can finally live with Covid. With regards to the briefings against Bingham, one of the revelations I found most shocking was how Lee Cain, the Number 10 Director of Communications was briefing against her and the vaccine task force, despite the vaccine project being a flagship initiative of the Johnson government and one that was initiated and championed by Boris himself. The book describes how by adopting venture capitalist-style development contract writing and risk management and by making Britain especially attractive for vaccine trials (the NHS Registry was crucial here), Britain was able to steal a march on the US and the lumbering EU Commission in securing under contract the necessary production facilities.

Catapulted into a national crisis, Bingham's eclectic team secured the first vaccine doses administered in the West and saved thousands of lives in the UK as new variants struck. On 3 April 2020, Kate Bingham was told that the likelihood of any Covid-19 vaccine working was 15% at best. Johnson is benignly hands-off til he has to become positively hands-on in reigning in spinning misinformation about the VTF coming out of Number 10. It appears that the Government has lost interest in both vaccines and pandemic preparedness, but it is also an example of the usual story of Government not learning from its mistakes. Fast-paced and very compelling… The Vaccine Taskforce will always be remembered as British science at its very best.

These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. nearly complete absence in the civil service of scientific, industrial, commercial and manufacturing skills'.Bingham’s eclectic team secured the first vaccine doses administered in the West, saving thousands of lives in the UK as new variants struck. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. One of the most notable is where she highlights the lack of relevant skills in the Civil Service and highlights the '. He was a lecturer in Politics at Oxford University 1989–96, specialising in American and British Government.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Good on her - success is not just about creating high performance teams, it is also about identifying and addressing hypocrisy and poor performance, and ultimately punishing failure. I sympathise greatly with her thoughts on the internal politics within HMG: private sector and public sector are like oil and water - they don't mix well. The tragic and magic is all told in a thrilling uplifting and yet ultimately depressing (the government couldn't care less about preparing for the next pandemic) account is simply brilliant.She is Managing Partner at life sciences venture capital firm SV Health Investors where she co-leads SV’s biotech franchise which has a long history of developing transformational new medicines.