Professor Sarah Gilbert finds out about an outbreak of a respiratory disease with no apparent cause on New Year's Day, 2020. Three weeks later with a design for the vaccine in hand, she calls on Dr Catherine Green. Can she go straight to production? The readers are Samantha Bond and Debra Baker.

From the outset it was a race against the deadly virus that has caused - and continues to cause - devastation across the planet. Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green explain the cutting-edge science, and sheer hard work that went into the extraordinary achievement of making an effective vaccine against Covid-19, and at the same time giving us hope that an end to this pandemic is in sight. All the while, like everybody else they are adjusting to living and working through lockdown.

Sarah Gilbert is Professor of Vaccinology at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, and her career has been dedicated to developing vaccines against disease. Since 2020, she has led the Oxford vaccine project. Catherine Green is Associate Professor in Chromosome Dynamics at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, a Senior Research Fellow at Exeter College, and Head of Oxford University’s Clinical BioManufacturing Facility.

Abridged by Katrin Williams
Produced by Elizabeth Allard Show less