ALOK’S VACCINE ARMY

Zoom meetings in their pyjamas. Emails at 3am. The untold story of the crack team – led by a bomb disposal hero – behind Britain’s jab triumph. And it all began with Business Secretary Alok Sharma’s decision to opt out of EU’s efforts

THE battle to defuse the biggest public health crisis for a century by rolling out a mass vaccination campaign was entrusted to a crack team of world-class experts led by a decorated Army bomb disposal expert.

Lieutenant Colonel Nick Elliott, a former combat and bomb disposal engineer in the first Gulf War, the Balkans and Iraq, was handed operational control of the Vaccine Taskforce in April.

The group, established in Whitehall under the auspices of Business Secretary Alok Sharma, was the brainchild of the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance – who concluded that the massive logistical challenge could not be achieved by the Civil Service.

Instead, an agile team drawn from across the private sector was constructed, dedicated solely to the procurement and roll-out of the vaccine at rapid speed.

Last week’s pictures of 90-year-old Margaret Keenan receiving the first Pfizer Covid vaccine

‘We needed to cut our own deals free from Brussels interference’

was the triumphant result of the team’s roundthe-clock work, with members of the unit sending 3am emails and holding Zoom meetings in their pyjamas as they tried to hammer out deals for the most cutting-edge new vaccines.

The unit, chaired by Kate Bingham, started as a cell of just 20 people–but soon mushroomed into a team of more than 200 employees on secondment from the military and industry, whose experience ranged from the pharmaceutical sector to major infrastructure projects such as the Trident submarine deployment.

The powerful team included Madelaine McTernan, the former managing director of Credit Suisse, Ruth Todd, from the MoD’s Submarine Delivery Agency, and former British ambassador Tim Colley.

The vaccine triumph is also a political success for Mr Sharma – one of the more modest and self-effacing members of the Government – who took the decision to opt out of the EU’s vaccine initiative in July to allow the UK to strike its own deals.

The move sparked outrage from opposition parties, with Lib Dem MP Layla Moran saying t hat walking away from the scheme would put ‘ideology ahead of public health’, while Labour’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy claimed the Government was ‘putting Brexit ahead of saving lives’.

But Mr Sharma’s decision has been vindicated: while the UK was the first country to grant regulatory approval for the vaccine, the EU’s medicines regulator is not expected to grant approval for Pfizer until late December, with the roll-out across the continent not expected until January at the earliest.

If the UK had joined the EU scheme, the European Commission would have the exclusive right to negotiate with vaccine manufacturers on Britain’s behalf, with the UK having no say in the decisions about which companies to negotiate with, how many doses to buy, the price to be paid or the delivery schedules – and with the approach having to be co-ordinated with all 27 of the EU’s member states.

Mr Sharma was free to ‘bet on every horse in the race’ by striking early deals with different providers, ordering 40 million doses from Pfizer on July 20.

This was followed shortly afterwards by 100 million doses of the Oxford University/ AstraZeneca jab, which is expected to gain regulatory approval soon.

Within six months, Lieut Col Elliott’s team had amassed an impressive stockpile of 357 million doses from seven separate vaccine developers – the highest rate in the world on a per capita basis.

In addition, British businesses stepped in to help manufacture three of the vaccines, with AstraZeneca, Valneva and Novavax operating from sites as far apart as Wrexham and Stirling.

A source close to the project said: ‘ Sir Patrick and Alok realised from a very early stage that the Civil Service would not have been up to the challenge.

‘It had to be a nimble unit run by a world-class logistics expert – Nick Elliott – and drawing on the brightest brains across industry. We also needed the independence to cut our own deals free from the interference of Brussels.

‘Imagine if it had been a Civil Service team co-ordinating with the EU. We wouldn’t have got the jabs out for months.’