At the time of writing, we are still officially in the Covid-19 pandemic that swept the world during 2020. This book was written by two of the people who were involved in the project to create the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine during 2020. This was the vaccine that I received two doses of in 2021, and it certainly led to me feeling that the worst of the pandemic was over and that I could go out and start living life more fully after more than a year of restricted socialising. It almost certainly had an effect in reducing the severity of my symptoms when I did eventually catch Covid in 2022. So I have a soft spot for this particular vaccine, even though it fell out of favour in the UK’s booster programme, and it seems it was never officially approved by the US. It has gone on to be used very effectively in many countries around the world and was a key part in bringing the pandemic under control and helping life get back to normal.
The chapters in this book are written either by Sarah Gilbert or Catherine Green, in roughly chronological order, giving each person’s perspective on what was happening at that time. The two had different roles on the project, with Gilbert leading the team, and Green running the Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility in which early doses of the vaccine were made for testing. As well as developing the vaccine, they describe what was going on in their lives during the pandemic. These parts reminded me of what it was like to live through this pandemic.
There is a lot of detail about how the vaccine was developed. It’s a case study in both vaccine science and project management. This book is an excellent answer to people who were wondering how an effective vaccine could have been made within a year, when previous vaccines have taken several years to get through the process. We learn about their work prior to 2020, which involved making vaccines for other diseases, using the same platform. They understood how to make new vaccines in this way and had experience with the technology involved. They also moved quickly and decisively to start work on the vaccine, and were able to secure funding quickly when it became clear that a vaccine would be needed. Governments and businesses were prepared to invest, and volunteers for clinical trials were able to be found quickly. With extra money, and a sense of urgency, certain things could be done in parallel that normally would be done one at a time. For example, they started manufacturing large quantities of the vaccine while clinical trials were still going on. If the trials had been unsuccessful, they would have had to destroy all the manufactured vaccine, wasting all the time and money spent in making it. But doing things like this in parallel enabled the roll-out to ramp up very quickly once the vaccine was approved. While regulatory authorities were motivated to approve the vaccines quickly, the authors are careful to point out that no shortcuts were taken. Clearly, other projects requiring approval were put on the back burner, and many people must have worked long hours and weekends to get things done promptly. Other than the authors, there were many other people involved in creating this vaccine and many of them are featured in this book.
The book doesn’t shy away from some of the issues that affected the vaccine’s reputation and uptake. They talk about issues during clinial trials, and the more general issue of vaccine hesitancy, and anti-vaccine sentiment. They also talk about becoming media personalities, as they had to be when the media were so keen for any news on the progress of vaccines during 2020. The main part of the book covers the period up to February 2021, with an additional chapter written for the paperback in 2022, in which they discuss the emergence of covid variants and other issues since the vaccine was first deployed.
While the book is well-written and easy to read, if you’re not particularly interested in the details of vaccine development, or if 2020 was particularly difficult for you and you don’t want a reminder, then this book may not be for you. I found this book fascinating and I learned a lot. The authors come across both as very smart, scientific thinkers, and pragmatic project managers, but also as humans, struggling with the same stresses and issues that we all were during the pandemic in 2020. This book is a both snapshot of that strange year of 2020, and a detailed look behind the scenes of one of the projects that helped bring the pandemic under control.