The Health Secretary will today praise the role of British scientists in the fight against COVID and say the government “has backed a lot of horses” when it comes to vaccines.
In a speech at the Jenner Institute in Oxford, ahead of the G7 health ministers meeting in the UK this week, Matt Hancock is expected to say: “Even before the first case of COVID-19 arrives in the UK we had started work. on how to develop, buy and deploy the vaccines that would ultimately make us safe.
“I was told that a vaccine had never been developed against any human coronavirus. We dared to believe it and we started early.
“We launched a call for research in February. In March, we were supporting six different projects, including the Oxford vaccine, as well as essential work on treatments – including the Recovery trial, which led to the discovery of the dexamethasone, the first treatment proven to reduce coronavirus mortality.
“These two projects, together, have already saved over a million lives.
“The biggest risk would have been not finding a vaccine at all. So we explicitly embraced the risk from the start. So we supported many horses and invested at risk.
“And instead of just sitting around and waiting to see which vaccines came out, we’ve been tenacious in helping them cross the line, drawing on our team’s abundant experience in the industry.”
He will say that the NHS has “performed with distinction … and that it has deserved all the applause that has reached it”. Almost three-quarters of the UK’s adult population have now received at least one dose of the vaccine.
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The UK’s “scientific strength” should also be applauded by the Health Secretary.
“Over the centuries, we have built one of the greatest scientific capacities in the world, and we must always support it”, he will say …
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Source: news.sky.com
This notice was published: 2021-06-01 21:12:00
