Exactly two years ago Prof Sir Andrew Pollard was starting to panic. “We were just waking up to the reality of Covid-19 and that we would need vaccines for our very survival,” the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group told the Guardian last week. He joined forces with a colleague, Prof Dame Sarah Gilbert, and together they launched one of the greatest medical missions in modern history. Their seemingly impossible task – to design, develop and deliver a vaccine from scratch to slow the advance of a lethal pandemic – was completed in less than 12 months, to the relief of millions.
Today though, the coronavirus landscape – and the status of their jab, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 – looks very different. In the UK, half the population have had their vaccine, restrictions have ended, and while cases and hospitalisations are rising in the UK, a dramatic uptick in deaths is not expected. The jab has saved more than a million lives, according to estimates, but its reputation has been battered by a toxic mix of misinformation, miscommunication and mishaps. Two years after Pollard, Gilbert and their teams first began making the miracle jab now known as Vaxzevria or Covishield, it has been sidelined in the UK and Europe, and snubbed in the US.
