Thread by @thetimes

In May 2020, a group of scientists at Oxford University loaded three 30ml and five 6ml tubes into a small polystyrene box, carefully packed them in dry ice, and sent them off to Heathrow. thetimes.co.uk/article/the-in…

There was no unusual security for this – no outriders, no armed guards. Yet it was almost certainly the most important package on the move in the world at the time.

From Heathrow, the tubes, which contained the result of months of work by a team led by Professor Sarah Gilbert, were flown to Gaithersburg, Maryland.

There, Per Alfredsson was waiting to receive them. Now he had to make enough to vaccinate half the world.

Blond, tall and perfectly bilingual, Alfredsson, exudes the sort of effortless Scandinavian competence you would want in a moody detective investigating Arctic Circle murders or, say, in the manager of a vaccine logistics operation.

Alfredsson is senior vice-president of Global Biologics Operations at AstraZeneca, with 24 years’ experience in Big Pharma, but he had never experienced anything like it.

“I’ve never seen it in the industry before, everyone coming together. Everyone wants to do the right thing.”

The hardest moments, though, have been due to the actions of governments – and journalists.

It has been when Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was saying it didn’t work, or when the German press was claiming, incorrectly, the vaccine had minimal efficacy in older people.

“From time to time, you know, you feel a bit sad. You know that everyone has done their part, that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people are sacrificing their family lives and may not see their kids at all. And then you read things in the paper.”

At the end of last month, the billionth stopper was put on the billionth vial, and the company took a big step towards fulfilling its stated mission: to provide a vaccine for the world.

Read the full interview by @whippletom: thetimes.co.uk/article/the-in…