It’s a huge relief, now I need sleep
Sarah Gilbert, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford and mother of triplets, says she is in need of rest before returning to work, Sarah Knapton and Henry Bodkin write.
The Oxford University team behind the coronavirus vaccine spoke yesterday spoke of their happiness that months of hard work had finally paid off.
Sarah Gilbert, the lead researcher of the development programme, said she was ‘‘incredibly relieved’’ that the jab was successful, and now wants to get some sleep before getting back to work.
While the scientific achievements that have allowed a vaccine to be developed so quickly are apparent, few will realise the family sacrifices that have enabled such single-minded focus.
When Gilbert gave birth to triplets in 1998, her partner, also a scientist, gave up his own career in order to look after the children, allowing her to throw herself into her work. Two decades later and all three have followed her into biochemistry, studying at Oxford and Bath.
The trio also volunteered for vaccine trials, and were injected as part of the first phase.
When asked earlier this year if she had been keeping an eye on their health over the breakfast table after the jabs were administered, Gilbert said: ‘‘I haven’t been home much.’’
Her regime has involved getting up at about 4am each day, cycling to the laboratory and returning home at about 8pm.
Even after the successful results were announced yesterday, the team has had little time to celebrate.
‘‘I’m feeling enormous relief that it works, and we’ve got an effective vaccine,’’ she said.
‘‘A lot of people have gone to huge efforts and we asked AstraZeneca to go ahead and make the vaccine so it would be ready to use immediately, so it would have been a huge disappointment if it hadn’t worked.
‘‘When the results first came through I was quite surprised because they were so complicated. It took a while to work through so there hasn’t been any time to celebrate.
‘‘It’s been a lot of late night phone calls, so what I’d really like to do now is get some sleep.
‘‘Then back to work tomorrow.
There are still results coming and lots more immunology to do and papers to write, and tomorrow I have to go to a review committee for another vaccine, so I’ve got to turn my mind to something else.’’
Gilbert is one of three women on the team, including Professor Katie Ewer, who runs a Twitter account called ‘‘The Wife Scientific’’, in which she describes her hectic life as a vaccine researcher ‘‘whilst seamlessly being a perfect wife and mother!’’
The other researchers are Professors Teresa Lamb and Adrian Hill, both from Ireland,
and Professor Andrew Pollard, a record-breaking amateur mountaineer who leads the vaccine group.
Their round-the-clock dedication to finding a vaccine allowed trials to begin within 100 days of learning the virus’s genetic code.
However, Gilbert said that people should not be worried by how quickly the vaccine has been developed. She said: ‘‘ I don’t know of any long-term effects from vaccines happening much later.
‘‘Any adverse events after vaccination either happen in a short period of time or alternatively can happen when someone has been vaccinated against a particular disease and then encounters the disease and gets a worst disease.
‘‘There was a danger that these vaccines would give enhanced disease and a lot of animal studies were done to make sure that didn’t happen.
‘‘Now the clinical trials have shown that people who get vaccinated and get the virus do not do any worse.
‘‘We have had no cases of serious disease and no hospitalisations in people who were vaccinated, whereas we did see that in people who weren’t vaccinated.’’
The Oxford team is the first vaccine group to show early evidence that the jab prevents transmission as well as disease, a fact which is likely to boost calls for as many people as possible to have the jab in order to build up herd immunity.
Gilbert said people may only need half the dose to be protected.
‘‘To be honest we’re still at quite an early stage and we might end up giving two low doses,’’ she added.
‘‘In our clinical trials we didn’t want to underdose people. We wanted to go for a strong immune response but it may be that we were actually giving higher doses than we needed and we still have to work that out and the immune response.
‘‘One of the casualties of having to go so fast is we haven’t tested a lot of different dose regimens.’’