Leading scientist on Covid-19 vaccine recalls ‘immensely gratifying’ work

One of the leading scientists in the development of the Covid-19 vaccine has described his life-saving work as an “immensely gratifying” experience.

Professor Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, was made a Companion of Honour by the King at Windsor Castle.

His team played a huge role in creating the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine as the world grappled with the unprecedented global pandemic, and Sir John has been recognised for his services to medicine, medical research and public health.

The NHS delivered the first Covid-19 vaccine in the UK – a Pfizer vaccine – to Maggie Keenan on December 8 2020, before vaccines manufactured by several different companies including Oxford-Astra Zeneca were used together across the country.

Sir John told the PA news agency: “As a doctor, you don’t ever run into those really extreme circumstances – that’s the only time it’s happened in my life.

“It was at one level quite frightening, because it was clear this was going to cause a lot of deaths and any time that we took getting the vaccine ready to go and out the door was potentially going to add more deaths to the list, so we knew we needed to work really fast.”

Sir John led the negotiations to bring pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca on board with the university’s research as a partner, and closely followed the progress of all the vaccine trials “seven days a week, 10 hours a day”.

Summarising his work, he said: “The whole thing in the end was immensely gratifying, because we got on top of it much faster than anybody thought we would and Covid is now floating around a bit like a case of the flu.”

Sir John revealed the University of Oxford was building a new centre for pandemic sciences, and that researchers had identified 12 of the most dangerous pathogens currently known and were manufacturing vaccines for all of them ahead of time.

Stressing it was “a major focus” of the university’s work, he added: “We’re now in a steadier state – it’s not quite so frantic – but we’re trying to get ourselves into a position where we could respond, if we had to again.”