“I think it’s time to ask the vaccine taskforce and the government, what is your plan for an escape variant? What is your plan for resilience for the future?”
In an interview with the Observer, Clive Dix, a leading figure in drug development who chaired the UK vaccine taskforce until April, said “I wrote a very specific proposal on what we should put in place right now for the emergence of any new virus that escaped the vaccine,” he said. “That was written and handed into the [vaccine taskforce] at the end of April [2021] when I left. I haven’t seen a sign of any of those activities yet.
“I sent a note to No 10 [in May] saying I think this is still an emergency and it should be dealt with urgently – and I want it on public record that you’ve got my proposal. But I didn’t even get a response to that. I prodded the government and said, ‘What’s going on, because we need to do this’. I don’t see any of that going on.”
He added: “I think it’s time to ask the vaccine taskforce and the government, what is your plan for an escape variant? What is your plan for resilience for the future? Let’s see it because I think the country needs to know.”
