With the primal need of the Covid-19 vaccine in this world, countries from across the world are doing everything to make it work. In those efforts, the UK Government announced the investment of 93 million pounds into building their own dedicated Covid-19 vaccine development centre.
The investment is going into forward construction of the new vaccine manufacturing centre, as reported by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The funding will further ensure that these centres are open and functional by next summer of 2021, which is a year ahead of the schedule. The objective behind the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) is to ensure that once the vaccine is available in the world, it makes the accessibility of that vaccine a lot easier and seamless.
This is a not for profit facility that is going to be constructed on the Harwell science and innovation campus in Oxfordshire. It will have the capacity of developing enough vaccine doses for the entire UK in a matter of six months once the vaccine has been developed successfully.
Aside from the 93 million pounds, another 38 million pounds is going to be invested on the rapid deployment facility which will be successful in scaling up the manufacturing from this summer itself. The same is dependent on the status of the vaccine development.
Officials further reported that VMIC would also help bolster UK’s long term capacity for dealing with any kind of future pandemic by helping accelerate the vaccine development for the existing complications.
“Once a breakthrough is made, we need to be ready to manufacture a vaccine by the millions,” said Alok Sharma who is the business secretary.
Sir Mark Walport, the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) chief executive also regarded this centre as the essential weapon for UK in fighting against the diseases and all the biological threats that they struggle with.
“The UKRI-funded teams at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London have developed potential coronavirus vaccines at unprecedented speed,” said Walport.
“By working with partners including government, VMIC and the Vaccines Taskforce to fast-track the manufacturing capability, we are ensuring that momentum will continue all the way from lab to patient,” he further added.
