UK vaccine centre aims to bolster pandemic preparedness
A state-of-the-art vaccine research facility, where scientists will work to ensure future pandemics are stopped in their tracks and do not cause the same disruption to everyday life as Covid-19, has been opened by the British government.
The Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre (VDEC) is based at the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) science and defence technology campus Porton Down, near Salisbury in Wiltshire.
Live viruses will be kept on-site in specialist containment facilities, with researchers looking at pathogens that do not yet have a vaccine, or ones where immunisation could be improved, such as flu, mpox or hantavirus.
Elsewhere, scientists will test emerging Covid-19 jabs on new variants, target diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), and are currently running phase one clinical trials on a potential world-first jab against Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, a tick-borne virus which is fatal in about 30% of cases.
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