Her clarity of thought and action in a such a dark and turbulent time is a seam running through the book, and I know for certain that her efforts saved many lives. This is an unmissable insider view into how the Vaccine Taskforce beat the odds and delivered the scientific miracle we all waited for. Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting. In fairness, if I'd have achieved what she did to earn the role, I would probably have felt the same.

The Long Shot is published as readers appear to have tired of Covid-19 and the miraculous vaccines have become more of a seasonal chore. It jumps between explanations of science behind key decisions, to snippets of Bingham’s life locked down in “a steep valley in rural Wales”, with Ottolenghi dinners and runs in the dark. Political manoeuvring, miscommunications and administrative meddling nearly jeopardised the project. But I have to disagree with the title, because the book shows that it really wasn’t such a "long shot" with Kate at the helm.Catapulted into a national crisis, Bingham’s eclectic team secured the first vaccine doses administered in the West and saved thousands of lives in the UK as new variants struck. Hancock appeared to have intervened because the taskforce was overseen by Beis, whose secretary of state, Sharma, was “insufficiently devious” to take him on, Bingham wrote. From a remote cottage, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus… as deaths mounted and the world shut down. But it is the ins and outs of the race to secure and deploy vaccines that unveils the most suprises.

In places, Bingham seems frustrated that she was under additional scrutiny due to being the wife of an MP which seems to be a recurring theme, and there does seem to be an element of 'how dare anyone question me'. As an outsider rooted in business, she offers strong and specific recommendations for transforming government. K. The authors combine a lucid explanation of the scientific breakthroughs needed to create the first Covid vaccine with an insider look at the politics that hampered the taskforce's efforts.But with the UK government in turmoil, this compelling book may be most valuable as a fresh vision for how to lead in a crisis. None of it was inevitable… the biggest risk was whether or not it was even doable [to develop Covid vaccines],” she says. On 3 April 2020, Kate Bingham was told that the likelihood of any Covid-19 vaccine working was 15% at best. I knew if he [Sykes] didn’t think much about any aspect of our operation, then he’d say so – loudly. This is an incredible account of the behind the scenes efforts of Kate and the VTF which secured for the UK early access to vaccines for COVID.

In the seven months in 2020 that she spent as the unpaid head of the UK vaccine task force Kate Bingham moved mountains. Hancock, who resigned as health secretary last year after breaching Covid restrictions by kissing and embracing his then aide Gina Coladangelo, is expected to challenge Bingham’s criticisms in a book to be released later this year. VMIC in its old guise would help scale that up, to manufacture it for early clinical trials and see whether it worked,” she says. A joint event organised by and benefitting The Friends of St Mary's Ross on Wye, NMITE and Rossiter Books. Indeed, Bingham’s candid account will be uncomfortable reading for those who nurse a dogmatic hostility to “insiders”.She is a board member of the Francis Crick Institute and was awarded a DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services as Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce. It was obviously just ‘the process’… the fact that it was b------s going in, and whoever was reading it didn’t understand it, didn’t seem to matter.

He kept being told by experts that things were impossible, he said, only to find out later that they were perfectly possible if enough effort was made. As governments across the world were scrambling to jump to the front of the vaccine queue in July 2020, Kate Bingham’s phone pinged. Abandoning the Vaccine Registry, where more than 500,000 people signed up to take part in clinical trials, was short sighted – Bingham wanted this resource to continue post-Covid. Venture capitalist and chair of the UK’s Covid vaccine taskforce Dame Kate Bingham and fellow venture capitalist, journalist and politics lecturer Dr Tim Hames look back at how the country’s successful vaccination programme was brought forward against all the odds. I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions.At the beginning of April 2020 Bingham was told that the likelihood of a Covid-19 vaccine working was 15% at best. The 56-year-old hopes that her book – which she co-wrote with Dr Tim Hames, a journalist, academic and former director general of the British Venture Capital Association – will help spur change. Kate was awarded a DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services as Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce. For our interview, Bingham has jotted down a preparedness pros and cons list, scrawled in red pen on a sheet of unruled A4. It seemed to me that Matt was still aggrieved that responsibility for vaccines had been taken from him and his department and moved over to BEIS,” Bingham wrote, adding that the department’s then secretary of state, Alok Sharma, was “insufficiently devious” to take on Hancock.