The leader of Britain’s successful Covid vaccination program has accused health officials of dismantling a critically important database set up to aid Covid vaccine trials when it could be used for other vital medical research programs.
“All this talk about the UK becoming a serious scientific superpower is nonsense,” Dame Kate Bingham told The Observer. “These people don’t really care. If you really want to strengthen our clinical research, don’t start dismantling what has been put in place ”.
Bingham’s dramatic explosion follows a decision by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to insist that volunteers who have already enrolled in a national database of individuals willing to take part in medical research must now go through a complex, three phase verification process to re-apply to stay in the scheme.
Bingham, who described the NIHR’s move as “ridiculous”, said the database was set up in spring 2020 so the UK had a pool of volunteers ready and waiting to be enrolled in trials once the researchers have developed candidate Covid vaccines.
“We have registered 550,000 people and approximately 50,000 of them have subsequently been used in 18 different vaccine trials for seven different companies. So it was incredibly effective ”.
Basically, when the scheme was established, a clause was added to ask volunteers who had signed up if they would also agree to participate in medical trials that did not involve Covid research: 94% said they would. “This has created an extremely valuable resource for the nation,” said Bingham, who has been appointed a dame for her work leading the UK Covid Vaccines Task Force.
The bureaucratic obstacles they had to overcome were enormous, but “now the bureaucracy has regained the upper hand: it is a problem,” he added. “NIHR officials went back to everyone in the database and told them they will need to re-register in a complex process that involves three separate steps and the exchange of verification emails.
“Only after that will the previous volunteers be registered again”.
Bingham said she went through the re-registration process herself and found it complex and unnecessary.
“It’s just a monumental way to lose a lot of people from the database,” he said.
“They had half a million people willing to take part in all kinds of medical research projects. But there’s no way they can get that number of people signing up again. It is a complete waste ”.
Bingham, managing partner of venture capital firm SV Health Investors, was commended for her work in making sure the UK quickly received large doses of Covid vaccines in the midst of the pandemic. However, she has since been sternly critical of the civil service culture she experienced when asked to lead the UK vaccine task force.
“The problem is that civil servants are focused on the process, not the outcome,” he told the Observer. “There are easier ways to keep all those volunteers in the database without going through this complex re-registration. It’s simple: we should invest in research infrastructures, not dismantle them. “
In a speech last year, Bingham said there was “little relevant scientific and business experience across the government, a culture of underperformance in delivering results, and a distrustful and often dysfunctional relationship between the government and the bioscience industry.” .
The issue was of particular concern today, Bingham added, as the UK was not yet “off the hook” when it came to tackling the Covid pandemic. Current vaccines do not block transmission and do not provide protection for a long time, he said.
“We must continue to test and develop new formats and new approaches and be prepared for the new variants that are likely to appear in the coming months and years. So why miss this pool of people who have already said they will help. He just looks crazy. “
The NIHR said it had made the move to create a new and better registry to help people with all conditions and added that it was important that people were asked to give new consent for any new volunteer service.
An NIHR spokesperson said the new service “is based on learning the vaccine registry and has improved functionality. It will also help support research into a whole variety of health conditions and treatments. ”
