The UK government has remained tight-lipped on whether they could guarantee that Brits would be the first to benefit from a Britain-based coronavirus vaccine, only promising that the citizens would get it “as soon as possible”.
Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday, the prime minister’s spokesman said that when responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, “countries will want to work together to ensure that it can be mass produced so that everybody can benefit from it”.
“What we are doing is working on both the development of vaccines and ensuring that we can produce them very quickly in the UK so that everybody in the UK who needed a vaccine could get it as soon as possible”, the spokesman pointed out.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, for his part, also dodged the issue, just saying that the vaccine is “not going to come in any time particularly soon to allow us to ease out of the current social distancing measures into a transition”.
Top UK Doctor Downbeat on Chances of Getting Vaccine in Near Future
He was echoed by the UK’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty who warned during the briefing that it would take time for scientists to develop the vaccine or "highly effective drugs” in Britain.
Whitty argued that the chance of having the vaccine within the next calendar year was "incredibly small" and that it was "wholly unrealistic" to hope for life returning to normal soon.
“This disease is not going to be eradicated, it is not going to disappear. So we have to accept that we are working with a disease that we are going to be with globally […] for the foreseeable future”, the top UK doctor said, adding that COVID-19-related restrictions may remain “for rest of [this] year”.
The remarks came as The Sun quoted an unnamed UK government source as slamming speculation that other countries may get access to the vaccine before Britons.
“The converse of which is are we happy to wait for a long time to get the vaccine if it’s developed overseas, during which time people die? It’s a pretty daft question if you give it some thought”, the source said.
UK Announces Coronavirus Task Force
This followed Business Secretary Alok Sharma telling reporters last week that the government has set up a special task force “to accelerate” the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
"We cannot put a date on when we will get a vaccine. But we live in a country with a rich history of pioneering science. Producing a vaccine is a colossal undertaking. A complex process which will take many months. There are no guarantees. But the government is backing our scientists, betting big to maximise the chance of success", Sharma pointed out.
Earlier, the government pledged that it would provide £14 million (about $17.2 million) in investments for 21 new research projects with the objective of combating the coronavirus spread. The statement was followed by Raab’s announcement that the national lockdown will be extended by an extra three weeks.
