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Vaxxers summary

Name: Vaxxers
Rating: 4.3 (150 reviews)
Author: Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green

Sarah Gilbert Catherine Green

The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus

4.3 (150 ratings)

24 mins

Brief summary

Vaxxers by Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green explains how vaccines work and why they are critical in fighting pandemics. It debunks vaccine myths and gives an insight into the life-saving impact of vaccines.

Topics

Life Sciences Medicine & Natural Remedies Diseases & Illnesses Women's Stories

Table of Contents

Vaxxers
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Learn how the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was created.

In late 2019, news began spreading about a novel coronavirus rapidly infecting people. It would come to be called the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the disease it caused, COVID-19, became one of the greatest global health crises since the 1918 flu pandemic.

By early 2020, researchers at the University of Oxford had started developing a safe and effective vaccine against the virus, and they eventually released the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in record time. Two scientists heading the research team, Dr. Catherine Green and Professor Sarah Gilbert, were there every step of the way.

In these blinks, you’ll discover how they sped up a process that normally takes years and what scientists and governments around the world can learn from this experience in order to combat the next deadly virus.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how outbreaks like SARS, MERS, and Ebola revealed the shortcomings of the world’s response systems;
what all coronaviruses have in common; and
how scientists, governments, and public health organizations are already preparing for future outbreaks.

Scientists were researching viral outbreaks and developing vaccines for years before COVID-19 was ever identified.

Coauthor Cath Green was staying at a campsite in northwestern Wales when she and her friend struck up conversation with a fellow camper. When Cath lamented the lack of cell phone signal, the camper expressed skepticism about the new 5G towers being installed around the UK – even though no associated health risks have been found.

At least, Cath’s friend joked, this person wasn’t saying that 5G caused COVID-19 or that Bill Gates was inserting microchips into everyone through vaccines.

The camper replied that actually, while there might not be a conspiracy, she didn’t know what went into these vaccines and she didn’t trust the people making them. She called these people them.

Little did she know that them meant Cath. She knew exactly what was in one of the soon-to-be approved vaccines. In fact, she was part of the research lab at the University of Oxford that had developed it.

The key message here is: Scientists were researching viral outbreaks and developing vaccines for years before COVID-19 was ever identified.

To people like that camper in Wales, it might seem like the COVID-19 vaccines were created too quickly and under mysterious circumstances. But the truth is that scientists were already preparing for something like COVID years before the first recorded case. The official name of the virus is SARS-CoV-2, and it’s neither the first coronavirus nor the first to cause SARS – that is, severe acute respiratory syndrome – in humans.

In November 2002, a previously unknown coronavirus – which came to be called SARS-CoV – was identified in a province in China. It caused pneumonia, and by the end of the outbreak in June 2003, 774 people had died. Public health efforts managed to contain the spread of infection through the traditionally effective methods of contact tracing and quarantine. There was no vaccine, and at the time, no demand for one. It was unclear if or when this coronavirus would return.

Coronaviruses are often found in bats, and most usually stay in bat populations, never reaching humans. With SARS, bats likely transmitted the virus to other mammals more commonly exposed to humans. That’s also what happened with the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, also known as MERS-CoV, in 2012. MERS was detected in camel populations in the Middle East, and spread to humans in close proximity to them by way of vapor droplets sent into the air when the camels breathed, sneezed, or coughed.

With each new outbreak, scientists and public health organizations learned more about which responses were most effective in containing viruses and which needed improvement.

Work on the Ebola vaccine paved the way for enhanced vaccine technology.

With the 2014 Ebola outbreak, it was clear that the systems in place to combat rapidly spreading viruses were inadequate.

Ebola outbreaks actually date back to 1976, but by 2014, there were still no licensed vaccines or approved treatments for the disease, despite its fatality rate of between 40 and 50 percent.

The ChAdOx1 MERS vaccine served as a blueprint for the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

To understand how platform technology works and why it was so useful in accelerating development of the COVID-19 vaccine, consider the analogy of a baker who offers birthday cakes with personalized messages.

Let’s say you want to order a cake for a friend's birthday. You tell the baker what the cake should say and how it should be decorated. Now, if business is slow, the baker starts the entire baking and decorating process from scratch. But once orders start piling up, that method takes too long. So instead, she bakes and ices many cakes each day, then adds customized messages and finishing touches for specific orders as they come in.

Progressing from stage to stage “at risk” greatly reduced the timeline to make the COVID-19 vaccine.

By the end of January 2020, Sarah, Cath, and their respective teams at Oxford were already hard at work making the vaccine – and applying for funding. Because the labs had limited capacity and COVID-19 took priority, they also had to put other vaccine development projects on the back burner. The process of “decorating the cake” – adding the virus’s unique genetic material to the ChAdOx1 platform – actually involves several different steps. Normally, each of these steps would take months or even years, and the funding applications alone require a lot of waiting between steps.

With this new rapid method of development, however, Sarah and Cath’s teams at the Clinical BioManufacturing Facility could move on to the next step before all the testing was finished on the previous step – an approach known as proceeding at risk.

Partnering with AstraZeneca and others provided the funding and infrastructure to manufacture hundreds of millions of vaccine doses.

The number of lives a vaccine can save doesn’t just depend on how effective it is in trials, but also on how many doses you can produce, how many people will have access to it, and how many will choose to get vaccinated.

In order for the latter two factors to even come into play, the scientists at the CBF in Oxford needed to produce their vaccine at a much larger scale.

Rigorous testing ensured the vaccine’s safety and efficacy before its public release.

While designing and producing the first COVID-19 vaccines took just over two months, it was all in preparation for the final stage before licensing: efficacy trials. This stage would take a further seven months. Luckily, the same ChAdOx1 platform was employed in previous influenza and MERS vaccines, so much of the early testing on dosing had already been completed.

But since this was a brand new virus and very little was still known about its behavior, scientists at the CBF and the University of Oxford’s Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine, or CCVTM, decided to be extra careful. Certain vaccines have the potential to cause a worse infection in recipients if they come into contact with the actual virus later on.

To prepare for Disease Y, the world needs to improve its research and manufacturing infrastructure, public health response systems, and global cooperation.

With the first vaccinations being injected into arms around the world, the work of reining in the virus – and preparing for the next one – was just getting started.

Along with the logistical hurdles of production and distribution, there was a more human obstacle: global vaccination campaigns have, in certain communities, been met with skepticism, posing a threat to the vaccine’s overall effectiveness.

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What is Vaxxers about?

Vaxxers (2021) follows the race to develop a functional vaccine to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr. Catherine Green, of the University of Oxford, deliver captivating and informative insight into the process of designing, testing, and manufacturing the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in record time. They recount exciting moments of innovation, as well as the hurdles faced along the way.

Vaxxers Review

Vaxxers (2021) by Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Here's why you should consider reading it:

Offering insider knowledge from one of the key scientists involved, the book provides a unique perspective on the race for a vaccine and the challenges faced.
With its clear and accessible explanations, the book demystifies the complex science behind vaccines, empowering readers to make informed decisions.
Through personal stories and compelling narratives, the book keeps readers engaged, reminding us of the human stories behind this monumental scientific achievement.

Who should read Vaxxers?

Anyone fascinated by vaccine development
Public health enthusiasts
Futurists looking to prepare for the next big pandemic

About the Author

Professor Sarah Gilbert is Saïd Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford and the co-founder of Vaccitech, a biotechnology company which develops vaccines and immunotherapies. Professor Gilbert specializes in developing vaccines for various viruses, including influenza, and co-developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. This is her first book.

Dr. Catherine Green is Associate Professor in Chromosome Dynamics at the University of Oxford’s Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics. Along with Professor Gilbert, Dr. Green also worked on developing the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Though she is the author of numerous research studies, this is her first book.

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