Yesterday, the Chair of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, Baroness Hallett, published the inquiry's fourth report on vaccines and therapeutics.
The report claims that the development and delivery of the Covid-19 vaccines was an “extraordinary feat” and one of the major success stories of the pandemic. It highlights that decades of prior research enabled effective vaccines to be authorised and rolled out within a year of the UK’s first recorded Covid‑19 case.
The report also identifies significant inequalities in vaccine uptake. Lower vaccination rates were seen in areas of higher deprivation and among some ethnic minority communities, driven by concerns about safety, misinformation and an underlying lack of trust in government and health systems.
The Inquiry stresses that these issues must be addressed before the next pandemic.
Baroness Hallett made five key recommendations in the report:
- Establishing an expert advisory panel
- Improving targeted communications
- Strengthening monitoring of vaccine uptake
- Reforming compensation arrangements
- Better facilitating regulatory bodies’ access to healthcare records
Nicola Brook, Legal Director & Solicitor at Broudie Jackson Canter, said in reaction to the report's publication:
“The report is a massive disappointment for our clients and a damp squib. While piling praise on the government’s response on vaccines, the Chair falls drastically short of recommending that action is taken to ensure the UK is better prepared to create vaccines in the future, even though she acknowledges we are in a worse place now than we were in 2020.
"She does not recommend creating a vaccines agency, instead opting for a panel of experts to advise government which would be largely toothless. The difference in the effectiveness of the two is stark and leaves the UK open to another catastrophe when the next pandemic strikes.”