Covid vaccine mastermind Kate Bingham warns NHS relies on vaccines ‘not good enough’

Former British vaccine czar Dame Kate Bingham has criticized officials for “taking their feet off the gas” by relying on existing Covid-19 vaccines that are “not good enough”.

Dame Kate accused Whitehall of “going back to shape” rather than looking for new vaccines to deal with the upcoming variants.

The current range of vaccines has significantly reduced the death toll from Covid, but their effectiveness in preventing infections has declined.

Some reports suggest that protection against the Omicron variant can be removed within six months of vaccination.

Dame Kate admitted that none of the vaccines available are good enough to prevent infection, despite reducing the death rate.

Lady Kate told The Times: ‘People say, ‘You know, not many people die,’ which is true. So let’s take our foot off the gas and focus on something else. But none of the vaccines are good enough. They do not block the transmission, do not protect for a long time. mRNA doesn’t have a good shelf life, the data on this is pretty clear.’

The venture capitalist has been called upon to spearhead the search for vaccines and ensure that vaccines are delivered quickly to the public.

He said there was “little relevant scientific and commercial experience in government, a culture of poor performance in delivering results” in the civil service. [and] a dubious and often dysfunctional relationship between government and the life sciences industry”.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare said: “We are not in the slightest dissatisfied with Covid and we continue to do everything possible to protect the public. We are the first country in the world to approve Moderna’s new bivalent vaccine.

“Our current Covid vaccines have saved countless lives and allowed us to live with this virus without restrictions.

“Vaccines remain our best defense against serious Covid disease, and those who qualify should come forward by invitation to call.”

Dame Kate’s concerns are heightened when a study from Imperial College London shows that two-thirds of cases may go away five days after symptoms start, and a quarter are still contagious a week later.

This is against NHS guidelines which state that “many will not be contagious to others after five days”. In the UK, no one is legally required to self-isolate after testing positive for Covid.

New research from Imperial College London shows that two-thirds of infected people can contract Covid-19 five days after symptoms begin.

Professor Ajit Lalvani, of Imperial College London and lead author of the study, recommended that people isolate themselves for five days and stay in isolation until they come back negative on lateral flow tests twice.

It comes after Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change called on the government to “mandatory masks on public transport and in most closed public places” this winter to ease the pressure on the NHS.

The World Health Organization (WHO) urged people to “wear masks and maintain social distancing” and added: “Learning to live with Covid-19 means not pretending it doesn’t exist”.

Health leaders have warned the NHS will face a crisis this winter as the threat of a triple coronavirus, flu and rising fuel prices begin to put pressure on hospitals during the colder months.

The new study, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, is the first of its kind to reveal how long it takes to be contagious after a coronavirus infection in the community.

Experts checked 57 people to test how long they remained contagious at home after being exposed to Covid.

Participants filled out questionnaires about their symptoms and took detailed daily tests to see how much virus they were spreading.

Only one in five people was contagious before symptoms developed, but two-thirds of cases were still contagious five days after the initial illness.

Professor Lalvani, director of the NIHR’s Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory Infections at Imperial, said: “We missed half the contagion picture for this study because it’s hard to know when people were first exposed in SARS when they were first contagious.”

“Using special daily tests and daily symptom recordings to quantify the infectious virus (not just PCR), we were able to determine the window in which people were contagious.

“This is critical for managing a pandemic and has not been previously identified for respiratory infections in the community.”

“Combining our findings with what we know about the dynamics of Omicron infections, we believe that the duration of infectivity we observed is generalizable to current variants of SARS-CoV-2, although the infection windows are slightly shorter . . .

“Our evidence can be used to inform infection control policies and self-isolation guidelines to help reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”

Rishi Sunak claims to have given SAGE “VIDLI” blocking powers in the UK

Rishi Sunak was accused last night of desperately rewriting history, claiming it was a mistake to “power up” the scientists who “diverted” the UK during Covid, despite initially advocating “bold” measures.

The former chancellor made it clear last night that it was a mistake to bow so heavily to SAGE, the government’s influential science committee, whose troubling predictions pushed Boris Johnson to impose a series of harmful restrictions.

In the same caustic interview with Spectator magazine, the up-and-coming Tory leadership argued that No10 did not recognize economic compromises “from the very beginning”.

Rishi Sunak was accused last night of desperately rewriting history, claiming it was a mistake to “power up” the scientists who “diverted” the UK during Covid, despite initially advocating “bold” measures.

Although the pandemic helped counter it early on, the government’s two-year cycle of containment paralyzed the economy and saw the NHS rebound. Ministers eventually lost faith in brutal policies, relying on vaccines and immunity to keep Covid at bay.

Sunak, who described himself as the “oppressed” in the race to become the next prime minister, complained that he was “not allowed to talk about the trade-off” between the virus-control effects of the blockades and the impact on health care. . , the economy and education – in a piece that strongly argues against blockades.

But today, SAGE scientists accused him of shifting responsibility, arguing that ministers make the decisions and that ministers’ failure to follow broader recommendations is “not the experts’ fault”.

Other experts pointed out that SAGE’s views were rejected because they tried to intervene earlier in the government.

Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist and one of SAGE’s most outspoken members, told MailOnline: “It’s an old saying that members of parliament advise and ministers decide. It should be like this, it’s always been like this, and it was like that during the pandemic.’

And today critics have accused him of political games and wondered why he didn’t speak publicly at the time if he was so against the measures. Social media commentators described her silence as “weak” and “poor”.

Johnson’s former communications chief Lee Cain today dismissed Sunak’s statement of the events as “completely false”, while former Prime Minister Dominic Cummings called his comments “dangerous nonsense”.

Mr. Sunak returned at noon last night saying he did not claim the first blocks were a mistake, despite strongly suggesting that SAGE would not move forward without its distressing overmodelling.

The Prime Minister candidate supported the UK’s tough stance when the virus first hit, even taking to the Downing Street stage at a briefing in April 2020, urging people to stay home to protect health care and save lives. He had said weeks ago, “It’s time to be brave, it’s time to be brave.”

Economic measures taken to contain the outbreak during Mr Sunak’s term as prime minister cost £400bn, but huge sums were spent on unused personal protective equipment as the permit regime was abused.

At the same time, virus containment policies have had a devastating impact on healthcare and are blamed for fueling delays in diagnosis and treatment, especially among cancer patients, with thousands expected to die prematurely.

But last month, Mr. Sunak said Omicron personally blocked a new block during the winter wave.