Sir Chris Whitty told ministers Covid vaccines could not be speeded up during the early days of the pandemic because the virus was not deadly enough, according to leaked WhatsApp messages.
The chief physician answered a question from Dominic Cummings in February 2020.
Mr Cummings, then chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, questioned the credibility of a report that Israeli scientists were just weeks away from developing Covid vaccines..
But Sir Chris replied that a disease with a mortality rate as low as Covid – for the sake of discussion said it was about 1 per cent – a ‘very safe’ vaccine and that no shortcuts could be taken.
“There will be a lot of good vaccine candidates coming into early clinical trials in the coming months,” he said.
Sir Chris Whitty reportedly told Dominic Cummings, then chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, that Covid jabs could not be rushed because the virus was not deadly enough
Sir Chris, pictured here in January, said standard safety testing for possible Covid jabs would be key in leaked WhatsApp messages
“The rate-limiting steps are late clinical trials for safety and efficacy, and then manufacturing.
“For a disease with a low (for the sake of argument, 1 percent) mortality, a vaccine has to be very safe, so the safety studies cannot be shortened.”
Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, also responded to Mr Cummings by saying that while the Israeli team’s research could work, it wouldn’t be a matter of ‘weeks’.
“All of these approaches will take many months at best and most optimistically,” he wrote.
“Remember, we still don’t have a vaccine that we know works for Zika, despite a lot of work over the years.”
Nearly 54 million Britons have had at least one dose of a Covid vaccine since the rollout began in December 2020 – just nine months after it was declared a pandemic.
The tranche of more than 100,000 WhatsApps was passed on to The Daily Telegraph by journalist Isabel Oakeshott (right), who was given the material by Matt Hancock (left) when they were working together on his book Pandemic Diaries
But Mr Cummings would argue to MPs in May 2021 that the UK’s vaccine rollout could have started months earlier in September, had the country abandoned traditional safety testing in favor of a ‘human challenge’ trial.
This would have resulted in ‘up to 10,000’ volunteers being injected with the virus and their families getting ‘£1m or whatever’ if they died, the former adviser said.
Before Covid shots became available, the overall risk of dying from the virus was estimated to be about 1 percent.
However, the individual risk of death from the virus, for example for the elderly, or for people with health conditions that make them more vulnerable to becoming seriously ill from the virus, could be much higher.
As vaccines began to soften the impact of the virus, the odds of dying dropped to about one in 3,000 — similar to seasonal flu.
The WhatsApp group in which the messages were posted included ministers, experts and civil servants.
MailOnline has not seen or independently verified the leaked WhatsApp messages The Daily Telegraph by Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist who helped former Health Secretary Matt Hancock write his book Pandemic Diaries.
MAIN CLAIMS OF THE LOCKDOWN FILES INVESTIGATION
A new cache of 100,000 text and WhatsApp messages leaked to the Daily Telegraph by the ex-journalist who ghost-wrote Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries claimed:
- Matt Hancock rejected the Chief Medical Officer’s call for all residents going to UK care homes to be tested for Covid
- A minister from Mr Hancock’s department said restrictions on visitors to care homes were ‘inhumane’ but residents remained isolated for months
- Mr Hancock’s adviser arranged a face-to-face test for Jacob Rees-Mogg’s child in a time of national shortage
- Mr Hancock told former Chancellor George Osborne, then editor of the Evening Standard: ‘I WANT TO HAIR MY TARGET!’ while pushing for favorable front-page coverage
- Mr Hancock is said to have met his target of 100,000 tests a day by counting kits sent before the deadline but may never be processed
- Social Care Minister Helen Whately told Mr Hancock the testing system ‘definitely worked’ after she managed to secure a test ‘only’ 50 miles from where she lived.
- Mr Osborne warned Mr Hancock that ‘no one thinks testing is going well’ at the end of 2020
- The then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, revealed he was ‘quiet crackers’ about Britain’s shortage of test kits
- Face masks were introduced in school corridors and common areas after the Prime Minister was told it would avoid a ‘quarrel’ with Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon
- Matt Hancock took ‘rearguard’ action to close schools after former education secretary Sir Gavin Williamson persuaded the Prime Minister to keep them open in January 2021
- Sir Gavin said teachers were looking for an ‘excuse’ not to work during the pandemic
- Ministers said there was ‘no solid reason’ to impose the ‘rule of six’ on children, but did it anyway
- Students with a false positive result on a lateral flow test had to self-isolate at home for 10 days, even if they tested negative on a PCR, to avoid ‘picking’ the policy
- The PM feared he was ‘blinking too soon’ in plunging the UK into a second Covid lockdown after being warned that dismal modeling that bounced him into the move was ‘all wrong’
- Mr Johnson was eager to ease restrictions on retail, hospitality and gatherings in June 2020 but was told he was ‘too far ahead of public opinion’
- Mr Hancock and top civil servant Simon Case joked about travelers being ‘locked down’ in quarantine hotels during the Covid lockdown
- The minister said the government must “clash hard on the police” to help deal with Covid rule breakers
- Mr Hancock’s team asked if they could ‘lock up’ Nigel Farage after he posted a video of himself in a pub when they suspected he had broken the rules
- • The former health minister hoped the pandemic would ‘propel’ his career to ‘next class’ and said he thought he ‘looked great’ in a photo in a MailOnline article
- Mr Hancock referred to Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out plan as ‘eating out to help spread the virus’ and lobbied officials not to renew the plan
- • Mr Hancock clashed with the Treasury, calling Steve Barclay, now the Health Secretary, a ‘w***er’ and accusing Mr Sunak of ‘only showing to the right’ by warning of a second national lockdown
- In the hours after his affair with married assistant Gina Coladangelo went public, he said the worst thing they could be accused of was kissing “before they legalized hugs”
- Ministers tried to remove NHS England boss Lord Stevens says just after Covid was first discovered, saying it would be a ‘massive improvement’
- Mr Hancock plotted to have Sir Jeremy Farrar, now WHO’s top scientist, fired from SAGE
- Mr Hancock planned when to ‘deploy’ the news of a new Covid variant to ‘scare the pants off’ the public so they complied with lockdown rules
- The former health minister branded the government’s vaccine czar, Dame Kate Bingham, as ‘totally unreliable’ and ‘crazy’ after saying only the vulnerable should be vaccinated against Covid
- Mr Hancock wanted to be the face of the vaccine rollout, he planned to do media rounds and ‘own’ the news of the Covid jabs
- Mr. Hancock tried to hide the fact that he was taking Ms. Coladangelo to dinner with the US Secretary of Health
- Sir Chris advised ministers against enforcing the sex ban during the pandemic
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