(09 Dec 2020)
Vallance and chief medical officer Chris Whitty were asked if there was something that could be done in the structure in scientific advice that could be a bit more forensic about those restrictions on the sector that have a very big impact on certain people. The scientific advisers said they are trying very hard to get data but can´t give specific data on it, and nor can anyone else across the world.
Health secretary Matt Hancock has said that Boris Johnson’s tier system is “no longer strong enough” to deal with the new more virulent variant of coronavirus.
(30.12.2020)
The Wrexham plant is able to produce around 300 million doses of the vaccine each year, and has been producing 150,000 phials a day for months in readiness to roll out the vaccine across the UK.
The CP Pharmaceuticals lab will carry out the „fill and finish“ stage of the manufacturing process. This involves dispensing the vaccine into vials ready for it to be sent out across the country.
The 18-month agreement with parent company Wockhardt was announced back in August.
Government sources have indicated an announcement later will see more areas move into tier four – „stay at home“.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock is due to detail the changes – which could be introduced within days – in the House of Commons after 14:30 GMT.
(23.12.2020)
(28.11.2020)
(28.11.2020)
(21.12.2020)
(23.11.2020)
Scientists took a common cold virus that infected chimpanzees and engineered it to become the building block of a vaccine against almost anything.
Before Covid, 330 people had been given ChAdOx1 based-vaccines for diseases ranging from flu to Zika virus, and prostate cancer to the tropical disease chikungunya.
The virus from chimps is genetically modified so it cannot cause an infection in people. It can then be modified again to contain the genetic blueprints for whatever you want to train the immune system to attack.
The hope in Downing Street is that the Oxford vaccine will get the green light by the end of the year. This would allow the Prime Minister to start laying out plans for restrictions to be lifted.
The MHRA drugs regulator has been doing its final review of the vaccine for three weeks now, since November 27, with a decision expected by next Tuesday.
(…)
However, they made a decision about Pfizer and BioNTech‘s jab within 10 days of being instructed to do so by the Department of Health.
(09.12.2020)
Little is known about the interests of the doctors, scientists, and academics on whose advice the UK government relies to manage the pandemic. Attempts to discover more are frequently thwarted, finds Paul D Thacker
Kritiker der Regierungspolitik in Großbritannien führen zur Untermauerung ihrer Forderungen just den Chef des GOS, Patrick Vallance, an. Der führenden Wissenschaftsberater der Johnson-Regierung und zugleich Vorsitzende der Impf-Taskforce besitze Aktien des Pharmaunternehmens GlaxoSmithKline im Wert von 600.000 britischer Pfund. Eben dieses Unternehmen hatte einen undurchsichtigen Corona-Impf-Deal mit der Regierung geschlossen.
They developed symptoms of “anaphylactoid reaction” shortly after receiving the vaccine, but both recovered after the appropriate treatment.
After the incident, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) told NHS trusts that anyone who has a history of “significant” allergic reactions – including to medicines, food or vaccines – should not currently receive the vaccine.
UK Vaccine Taskforce Chair Kate Bingham said that the vaccine was being made in bulk first, known as „drug substance“, but could not yet be put into vials until more was known on the timing of late-stage trial data.
„We‘ve not yet put them into vials because as soon as you put them into vials you start the clock for the… shelf life, or how quickly you have to use the vaccine,“ she told lawmakers.
Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health.1 Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.
The UK’s pandemic response provides at least four examples of suppression of science or scientists. First, the membership, research, and deliberations of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) were initially secret until a press leak forced transparency.
She is expected to leave her post at the end of the year, according to a government source who said her contract ran until January 2021 and she had always intended to leave at that point.
Downing Street today refused calls for England‘s second lockdown to be cut short and insisted it will run until December 2, despite four more sets of real-world data that show the second wave was already shrinking before the Government pushed the panic button on a drastic month-long shutdown.
Promising figures published today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – which runs a massive government surveillance scheme that randomly swabs tens of thousands of people to track the size of the outbreak – suggest that the country‘s coronavirus outbreak has shrunk.
Official projections which pushed the country into a second lockdown have been quietly revised to no longer suggest deaths could soon overtake those at the peak of the first wave, The Telegraph has learned.
– King‘s College London said cases were now ‚plateauing‘ and there was a ‚slight fall‘ in infections across UK
– Oxford‘s Carl Heneghan said told how coronavirus hospital admissions, cases and ‚in effect‘ deaths in retreat
– It comes as Sir Patrick Vallance and Prof Chris Whitty face questions from MPs over the 4,000 deaths figure
– Beds have never been less than 85% full for a three-month period since 2010
– Spring this year was the first time, because patients were turfed out for Covid-19
– And occupancy remains below average levels despite second wave, stat shows
Boris Johnson faces a rebellion from his backbenches over the new national lockdown restrictions for England amid warnings that the measures would be „disastrous“ for the economy.
This comes after Cabinet Minister Michael Gove admitted the four-week-long national lockdown could be extended beyond December 2.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith wrote in the UK‘s Telegraph newspaper that the month-long lockdown showed government was „giving in to the scientific advisers,“ claiming that government experts had „pressurised“ Johnson into the step.
„Normally, advisers advise and ministers decide. Yet that system has broken down with Sage [the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] believing its advice to be more like commandments written on stone and its members publicly lecturing the Government over the airways,“ Duncan Smith wrote.
Ms Bingham was appointed chair of the UK‘s Vaccine Taskforce for Covid-19 in May and reports directly to the Prime Minister on the progress of a coronavirus vaccine, which experts say is key to controlling the pandemic.
The taskforce, which Ms Bingham says was the ‚brainchild of Sir Patrick Vallance‘ — Number 10‘s chief scientific adviser, is at the forefront of putting plans in place to get the UK population vaccinated.