'Jabbed': The inside story of Oxford's Covid-19 Vaccine

On Monday 10 May, Channel 4 aired the documentary ‘Jabbed! Inside Britain’s Vaccine Triumph’ which tells the inside story of the government’s Vaccine Taskforce – the team responsible for finding, funding and procuring Covid vaccines, and their race against time to secure the right vaccines whilst UK death rates started soaring in the spring of 2020.

Among the interviewed members of the team were St Cross former Vice-Master and Fellow Professor Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator of the trial, and his colleagues Professor Sarah Gilbert, and Regius Professor of Medicine Sir John Bell from the University of Oxford, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, Chief Medical Officer, and Kate Bingham, Vaccine Taskforce Chair, and others.

Professor Pollard explained that his team had to work to actually start the first human studies in parallel with the animals studies. Speaking about the challenges in preparing and reporting the data of the trials, he said:

To prepare the results is the most gargantuan effort. Half a million pages of data, all presented to the Independent Safety Monitoring Committee. And then... this was on Saturday evening, and they invited me then to hear the results.

Earlier this year, we welcomed filming crews to College and our keen eye has spotted the van Heyningen Room where Prof Andy Pollard was filmed, as well as our Blackwell Quad. 

We were delighted to host the filming crew and play a part in the making of their documentary programme. You can watch 'Jabbed' here.

You can keep up-to-date on the latest Oxford Vaccine news on their dedicated website here.

Images: Channel 4