A vaccine to tackle a future pandemic could be available in GP practices just four months after the threat is identified, according to NHS planning assumptions.
NHS England has this week published a new ‘framework’ for managing the response to any future pandemic, which covered the role of primary care and digital technologies.
On vaccines, NHSE said it is ‘anticipated that a pandemic specific vaccine (PSV) will be available four to six months after the pandemic agent is identified’.
This is the ‘earliest’ prediction for a vaccine becoming available, and it will depend on whether there are existing vaccines that could be ‘used as a basis’.
But this is much quicker than the 11 months needed for the Covid-19 vaccine, which had already sped up the usual vaccine development timeline of around 10 years.
As in the Covid-19 pandemic, NHSE expects that any new vaccine would be delivered primarily through GP practices, with potential support from ‘mass vaccination services’ or the ‘stand-up of community pharmacy’.
The UK is currently part of a global mission to ensure vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics to tackle future pandemics can be deployed within 100 days of recognising the new threat.
In 2021, a group of MPs concluded that there were ‘serious errors’ in the Government’s initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic, including that it was ‘too reactive’ and needed to be more anticipatory.
However, the same report by the Health and Social care committee commended the Covid vaccination programme as one of the ‘most effective initiatives in UK history’.
Other key takeaways from NHS England’s pandemic planning include:
- The NHS App, which developed quickly during the Covid-19 pandemic, could play a bigger role in the future, by acting as a ‘single digital front door’ for patients and shifting clinical activity ‘away from face-to-face’.
- NHS England expects primary care to play a key part in any pandemic response, particularly by working ‘to ensure patients are as prepared as possible’ via ‘public health messaging’.
- The wider primary care team may have to take on more clinical responsibility and work ‘at the margins’ of their scope of practice, with ‘appropriate professional and clinical indemnity’ to be ‘discussed at a national level’.
The high-profile Covid inquiry, which is expected to publish its first official report on Thursday, heard last year from the BMA that unpreparedness for the pandemic left doctors thinking they ‘might die’.
