I trust that A. Libdem Spokesman has publicly condemned the ludicrous chauvinism of the Westminster Education Secretary in asserting that an anti-SARS/Cov2 vaccine is approved for use in this country before anyone else because we are better than anyone else. One can imagine Williamson singing Flanders & Swann's anthem of Patriotic Prejudice with a straight face, unaware that it was a satire.
It has already been pointed out elsewhere that the design of what is known as the "Pfizer" vaccine was conceived by a dedicated Turkish husband-and-wife team welcomed into the German Federal Republic, and that the US pharma giant was brought on board because BioNTech did not have the scale of operation to manufacture and market the breakthrough vaccine. As I understand it, the innovation can be applied to the production of vaccines to combat other infectious diseases, known and as-yet unknown,
As to the speed of our medicines regulator approving the use of the BioNTech vaccine, I have no doubts about its safety. If there were the slightest risk, news from the multi-thousand person, multi-national trials would have leaked out even if BioNTech and Pfizer wished to suppress it, which I do not believe they would. Witness the slight hiccup in the progress of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine trials.
Where there has to be a slight suspicion is over the effectiveness of the vaccine. As Dr Fauci said in his original response to the news of the MHRA approval, the government agency seems to have taken completely on trust the trials data submitted by the companies. Normally, the MHRA would comb through the data in fine detail. In this case, they seem to have taken the view that the companies would, in view of the significance of this particular product, have triple-checked their own findings and not dared to fudge any of the figures.
Medical devices and drugs regulation is not a devolved matter, by the way, not even to Scotland. Therefore, the MHRA decision automatically permits the vaccine to be used throughout the UK. Wales also has to abide by the rulings of NICE, for which Scotland has her own equivalent.
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It seems that a component of the rapidity with which MHRA approved the BipNTech/Pfizer vaccine (and will presumably be able to do the same with the Oxford/AstraZeneca one when the time comes) is that, rather than wait for the trials data to be collated and submitted as is the normal practice, the agency has been following the trials in real time. Thus the examination process has overlapped the trials phase, just as the manufacturers have overlapped production. [Source: Radio 5 Live Science.
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