Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green on creating a vaccine against Covid-19

Virgin Radio

25 May 2022, 09:58

Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about leading on the manufacture of the vaccine against Covid-19.

Their book, Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford Astrazeneca Vaccine and The Race Against The Virus, is out tomorrow in paperback. Dr Catherine Green told Chris: “I think it’s been a really good opportunity for us to tell a story. Science is often about data and facts, and this particular story, I think, needed some storytelling as well as data and facts. We hope we did a bit of both in the book.”

Catherine added that the new paperback edition of Vaxxers has given the pair the “opportunity to update it, because obviously a year had passed since the first hardback edition, to cover some of the things that had gone on within that year… vaccine side-effects, vaccination in pregnancy, vaccinations for children, global problems for distribution.”

On what has occurred since the original hardback came out, Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert  said: “We’ve been following the outbreak of the new variants since we finished the original version of the book. So when we stopped, that was in March of 2021, and then we started to see a lot of new variants of the coronavirus circulating, and they were more transmissible, and they were infecting people more, but because a lot of people were vaccinated, people were getting infected, but they just have a cold, like we used to have a cold before the pandemic, and not really worry about it very much." 

She continued: “That’s really what happens to most people when they’re vaccinated now, and they encounter one of the new variants. So, we’re moving to a situation where this virus isn’t going to go away, but it’s not going to cause us anything like the problems that it did in 2020, because people have got better protection against it now.

“There are also new drugs that have been developed that we can use for people who do start to get more ill. We know a lot more about dealing with people who are seriously ill with the virus if they’re vulnerable, but the vaccinations have really stopped most people from having serious illness, and that means we can go back to living our lives like we used to.”

When talking about what they have learnt from the pandemic, Sarah told Chris: “It’s not completely over. We’re definitely over the worst, but there’s still lots to do to get over the effect that Covid’s had on us, and what we’re concentrating on now is doing everything we can to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. Because we learnt a lot in 2020 about how to do things better, how to go faster, how to try and stop a disease spreading before it can get to everybody. And there will be other outbreaks of viruses in the future, and what we really need to do is to be as well prepared as possible, to get on top of that straight away and stop it before it can get round the world and cause another pandemic.”

Catherine said: “I’m an optimist, so what I learnt is that people are really good. I know that people are often thinking that we didn’t look out for each other, but we did, and we did in the scientific community, and communities came together and supported the vulnerable, and it was a time, for me, of great hope that, in a crisis, people can really pull together and do great things. So I continue to take that through. Although it was awful, some of the things I think are highly positive, and we mustn’t forget that there is good in people and good in situations.”

The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is one of the UK’s leading coronavirus vaccines, and took just 65 days to go from DNA construct to clinical trial without compromising on safety. Catherine said: “I think what we learnt is you have to go fast, early. Act fact. Because a short-term pain is always going to be better than a long, drawn out pain that you’re going to end up with if you don’t act fast enough in the beginning.”

On whether their book had changed sceptical people’s minds on getting the vaccine, Catherine said: “It’s not for us to change people’s minds, but it’s for us to make sure the information is out there for them to make up their own minds on the basis of good quality information, rather than on the basis of who shouts the loudest.”

When Chris asked Sarah about the ovation she received from the crowd at Wimbledon, she told him: “I thought I was just going to watch some tennis, so it was a real surprise when they turned the camera on me without any prior warning. I was in the royal box with a whole group of people from the NHS who’d been working on looking after people, delivering the vaccine. So that ovation wasn’t just for the people who’d made the vaccine.”

Catherine added: “We’ve had a couple of really lovely recognitions. We went to Pride of Britain with Carol Vorderman, and I think I got a bit over excited when I got to stand next to Stephen Fry. And we went to the GQ Awards which was in Tate Modern. They turned Tate Modern into a restaurant for the day, and we were very starstruck there, and I think I got a bit sweary in the speech. We were introduced by Prince Harry by video link. It was all just a bit A-list for us, and we were just wearing our, like, Primark outfits! But it was just nice to be able to take that recognition for the team.”

VAXXERS is out in paperback tomorrow, 26th May.

For more great interviews listen to  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or  catch up on-demand here.