COVID-19 UK Political Analysis by Tim Hames – 24th July 2020

This has been a disturbing week in the struggle against coronavirus internationally. It seems to be close to out of control in parts of the United States. There has been evidence of extensive local second spikes in countries such as Spain, which were hit very hard at the onset of the disease and imposed a rather more comprehensive lockdown than was the case in the United Kingdom. Others such as Australia, which appeared to have dealt with the virus very efficiently during the first wave of infections, are now finding many more new cases having thought that the virus was virtually eradicated. So far the numbers of infections, hospital admissions and deaths in the United Kingdom do not seem to be rising rapidly in response to the lifting of the lockdown, although there have been prominent isolated examples such as in the city of Leicester. All of this makes the search for a vaccine even more important. The story of the week for the virus crisis has been the publication of the results of the first two phases of human testing of the Oxford University vaccine in The Lancet. These appear to be very encouraging. How this particular vaccine came to be the front-runner is the focus of this FTI Political Analysis.