UK spearheads efforts to develop Covid-19 vaccine

The UK Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has disclosed that the UK government is making frantic efforts to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus.

While disclosing this at Downing Street briefing on Tuesday 21 2020, Mr Hancock said that the only way to defeat coronavirus is to develop a vaccine.

“In the process of developing a vaccine that’s referred to as a ‘trial and error’ process, the UK has heavily invested money than any other country and this has put the UK in front of the global effort,” he said.

He further said that Imperial College London and the University of Oxford which are the two leading vaccine development centers at the UK universities would receive £42.5m as support for their clinical trial.

Hancock similarly pledged his support for the projects as he said that the universities are making considerable progress in developing the vaccine and that the government is ready to do anything to support them.

“Both of these promising projects are making rapid progress and I’ve told the scientists leading them we will do everything in our power to support,” said Hancock.

“After all, the upside of being the first country in the world to develop a successful vaccine is so huge that I am throwing everything at it,” he added.

Speaking about shortages of personal protective equipment to the frontline workers, the secretary said that the government effort to get PPE across to frontline workers was unprecedented.

He also said the government was working with both the UK-based companies and other companies abroad to buy PPE items especially from China to help address shortages in PPE supplies.

Hancock said that there had been 8,000 offers of help from UK companiesand that the government is currently working with 159 UK manufacturers across the country.

Meanwhile, as of Tuesday, the UK had recorded 17,337coronavirus deaths with the new 823 new coronavirus hospital death.