The United Kingdom began developing vaccines for the next potential pandemic caused by an unknown “Disease X.” Disease X is the name given to any unknown pathogen having the potential to cause another global pandemic.
The warning came ahead of the formal opening this week of new laboratories, known as the Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre, based at Poston Down in Wiltshire, which was established last year. The team is made up of more than 250 scientists.
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Dame Jenny Harries, chief executive of the U.K. Health Security Agency — the agency that runs the center— stated that much of the lab’s work would support the “100 Days Mission.”
Under Britain’s G7 presidency back in 2021, this mission was introduced as an effort to develop a ”vaccine against a potential killed pathogen within little more than three months identifying it.”
According to Harries’ statement to Sky News: “What we’re trying to do here is ensure that we prepare so that if we have a new Disease X, a new pathogen, we have done as much of that work in advance as possible.”
The UK government's high-security Porton Down laboratory & 200 scientists are developing vaccines ready for the next pandemic that will be caused by "Disease X." They've drawn up a list of animal viruses capable of infecting humans that could spread around the world. pic.twitter.com/5yUfEAZM69
— Mark Alan Pearce (@PearceAlan1962) August 7, 2023
“Hopefully we can prevent it [a pandemic],” he continued. “But if we can’t and we have to respond, then we have already started developing vaccines and therapeutics to crack it.”
Scientists at the center are now monitoring several high-risk pathogens including bird flu, monkeypox and hantavirus – a disease spread by rodents.
When discussing the rapid speed of COVID-19 vaccine development, Professor Isabel Oliver, U.K. Health Security Agency chief scientific officer, said that the goal of the 280 scientists at the center was to “detect threats at source and control them before they spread.”
Oliver added: “If those vaccines had been available just a bit earlier…or deployed more quickly we could have saved many more lives…and we could have obviously returned to greater normality much more quickly.”
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