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A leading British scientist, who has worked on the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine, has criticized the UK government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of the epidemic. Sarah Gilbert, who led the team behind the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine, said the UK ignored warnings until too late in the pandemic and that in some ways the lessons didn’t were still not learned. Professor Gilbert, while speaking to Observer, acknowledged the government’s efforts to set up a vaccine manufacturing center, but said it would have been better if it had been operational in 2020, adding that it would not will only be operational at the end of 2021, which is very late.
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Professor Gilbert also pointed out that the government had ignored warnings about “disease X”, which the World Health Organization (WHO) warned against long ago. Professor Gilbert also pointed out that everyone is still talking about the dangers of airborne viruses when it was already clear that the coronavirus had spread through the air after the Mers outbreak in 2015. It comes as the government Britain is on track to vaccinate 15 million people by February 15.
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Vaccination campaign in the UK
The UK vaccination campaign is currently in full swing with over 14 million people vaccinated to date. The UK government intends to vaccinate 15 million people by mid-February so it can start easing restrictions in the country in early March, as vaccines take at least 15 days to trigger an immune response. The UK has so far recorded more than 4 million cases of COVID-19, of which more than 1.16,000 have died.
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The UK is currently witnessing the second wave, which is fueled by a new strain of the COVID-19 virus. On February 12, the UK recorded more than 14,000 new cases and more than 750 new deaths. The UK is past its peak, dropping from an average of over 50,000 new cases to 15,000 cases per day. However, the infection rate is still high compared to some of the other countries on the worst affected list.
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