By Tony O’Riley
Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, today pledged £42m to the imperial team project and the Oxford team to support their clinical trials. Mr. Hancock sad he was making £22.5 million available to the Imperial team project to support their phase 2 clinical trials, which will assess a sample of several thousand trials and to begin the work on a subsequently very large-scale phase 3 trial.
He also said he would be making available £20 million to the Oxford team to fund their clinical trials. He said the the team have accelerated the trials process, working with the regulator the MHRA, who have been absolutely brilliant, and as a result I can announce that the vaccine from the Oxford trial will be trialled in people from this Thursday.
”In normal times, reaching this stage would take years and I’m very proud of the work taken so far.At the same time, we will invest in manufacturing capability so that, if either of these vaccines safely work, then we can make it available for the British people as soon as humanly possible.Nothing about this process is certain.Vaccine development is a process of trial and error and trial again. That’s the nature of how vaccines are developed. Being the first country to develop a successful vaccine ”is so huge that I am throwing everything at it.
The Health Secretary highlighted that 535,342 tests have now been carried out in the UK, excluding Northern Ireland. Of these, 129,044 people have tested positive, he said. The number of patients in hospital with COVID-19 symptoms is now down to 17,681. 17,366 people have now, sadly, died in hospital- an increase of 852. This number is another salutary lesson and it tells us of the deadly nature of this virus.We owe it to them – and to ourselves – not to throw away the progress we’ve made so far. We have been clear that we will not risk lives by relaxing the social distancing rules before our 5 tests have been met:
He said the Department Of Health was constantly working to improve that delivery system, buying PPE from around the world, and working to make more at home. ”We have a diverse range of suppliers and are working day and night to expand that supply base.
”We are in direct talks with the factories that produce PPE and the fabric that it’s made of. This has proved one of the most fruitful avenues and I want to especially thank my Foreign Office and DIT colleagues, especially in China, for their incredible work making these connections’. I also want to thank the enormous response we’ve had from our appeal for companies to come forward to help replenish the stocks.As of yesterday, we have had 8,331 offers of PPE equipment and we are investigating each and every one of those many leads.
Of course, some of these leads have led to very large-scale purchases of many millions of items. But, the reality is that not everyone who approaches us can deliver on their offers in scale.We are actively engaged with over 1,000 companies, and I can announce that we are working with 159 potential UK manufacturers, which are starting to come on stream. I have said many times how determined I am to get people the PPE they need. This is a 24/7 operation. It’s one of the biggest cross-government operations I’ve ever seen.
I’m grateful to colleagues from the NHS, from Public Health England, the Crown Commercial Service, Cabinet Office, the Communities Department, the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces, the devolved administrations and territorial offices, the Business Department, the Treasury, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Trade for their enormous hard work on this. And I’m very grateful to Lord Deighton, who delivered the Olympics, for stepping forward to lead this national effort, and deliver once again for his country.