Porton Down: Can this laboratory help stop the next pandemic?

One of the UK's astir secretive centres of technological probe - Porton Down - is aiming to halt the adjacent pandemic "in its tracks".

I person passed done the incredibly choky information astatine this distant installation to get uncommon entree to its scientists.

They are based successful the shiny caller Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre.

Their enactment builds connected the effect to Covid, and aims to prevention lives and minimise the request for lockdowns erstwhile a caller illness adjacent emerges.

"Covid, of course, is not a one-off," says Prof Dame Jenny Harries, main enforcement of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which runs these laboratories.

"We accidental it [Covid] was the biggest nationalist wellness incidental for a century, but I don't deliberation immoderate of america deliberation it'll beryllium a period earlier the next," she adds.

The operation of clime change, urbanisation and radical surviving person to animals - the root of galore caller diseases which transportation to radical - means we're facing a "rising tide of risk", she says.

Porton Down - located successful the tranquil Wiltshire countryside, adjacent Salisbury - is 1 of the fewer places successful the satellite equipped to probe immoderate of the nastiest viruses and bacteria you could imagine. The freezers present incorporate the likes of Ebola.

Neighbouring buildings see the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (part of the Ministry of Defence), wherever it was confirmed the nervus cause Novichok has been utilized successful the Salisbury poisonings.

The vaccine laboratories - housed successful acheronian greenish buildings - were hastily constructed arsenic portion of the exigency effect to Covid.

But, arsenic the aggravated demands of the pandemic person waned, the absorption has shifted.

The caller vaccine probe centre is concentrating connected 3 types of threat:

The purpose is to enactment with the pharmaceutical industry, scientists and doctors to enactment each stages of vaccine development.

Porton Down scientists are moving connected the archetypal vaccine against Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever, which is dispersed by ticks and kills astir a 3rd of those infected.

The illness is recovered successful Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and successful Asia - and could dispersed further with clime change.

At the different extremity of the process, vaccine effectiveness is evaluated. It was scientists present who spotted that the Omicron variant could bypass immoderate of the extortion afforded by Covid vaccines.

And they are inactive monitoring caller Covid variants by increasing them successful the laboratory, exposing them to antibodies successful taken from humor samples and seeing if caller variants are inactive capable to infect.

Meanwhile machines - unofficially named Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, BB8 and Palpatine - are portion of the beforehand enactment monitoring the menace posed by the world's largest flu outbreak successful birds.

The H5N1 avian flu microorganism has devastated vertebrate populations, and regular investigating of farmworkers has recovered the first, symptomless, cases successful radical successful the UK.

The quality is, earlier the pandemic the teams present were capable to trial conscionable 100 samples a week - present it's much than 3,000.

The enactment present feeds into the "100 Days Mission" - a hugely ambitious imaginativeness to make a vaccine against a caller menace successful 100 days.

Historically, it has taken a decennary to plan and trial caller vaccines. The unsocial circumstances of the pandemic meant the archetypal Covid vaccines were produced wrong a year, with the vaccine rollout starting successful December 2020.

Estimates suggest Covid vaccines saved more than 14 cardinal lives successful conscionable the archetypal 12 months they were used.

"Imagine if those vaccines had been disposable conscionable a spot earlier," said Prof Isabel Oliver, main technological serviceman for UKHSA.

"They were disposable much rapidly than ever earlier successful history, [but] we could person saved galore much lives and we could person returned to greater normality overmuch much quickly."

The anticipation present is the lessons of the Covid pandemic volition beryllium mean we are amended prepared adjacent time.

Prof Harries says successful the past we person been simply reacting to events, but successful the aboriginal we request to beryllium connected the beforehand ft and "try and stop" immoderate pandemic earlier it adjacent begins.

And if a caller illness does occur, she adds, we request to "stop it successful its tracks" successful its earliest stage.