London, UK: The UK ministers have launched a vaccine research laboratory to prepare for a pandemic pathogen. Scientists will be developing vaccines for disease X’ in the government’s high-security Porton Down Laboratory Complex in Wiltshire.
The UK Ministers have opened the laboratory for more than 200 scientists. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.”
Live viruses will be kept in specialised containment facilities for scientific purposes. These containment facilities are equipped to safely handle and study pathogens that do not currently have a vaccine available or for which existing immunisation methods could be enhanced.
What we’re trying to do now is capture that really excellent work from COVID and make sure we’re using that as we go forward for any new pandemic threats.
Professor Dame Jenny Harries, the head of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said.
“What we try to do here is keep an eye on the ones that we do know. For example, with COVID, we are still here testing all the new variants with the vaccines that have been provided to check they are still effective. But we are also looking at how quickly we can develop a new test that would be used if a brand new virus popped up somewhere,” Professor Jenny Harries further added.
UKHSA’s chief scientific officer Professor Isabel Oliver remarked that, “We know that through scientific advancement, we could detect and control these spreads before they have the impact that COVID-19 had on our lives. It’s not easy, but we know that if we strengthen surveillance and if we accelerate the development of diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics, we could do so much better.”