Leading The UK Vaccine Task Force

This case describes the first six months of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, under the leadership of Kate Bingham. With a career spent in the private sector as a biotech investor, Bingham’s appointment within the government was considered unusual. The overarching brief given to her by the UK Prime Minister was simple: “Stop people from dying.” At that time, however, no vaccine for human coronaviruses had ever been successfully developed, and the average time to take any new vaccine to market was over ten years. Furthermore, the UK had a relatively weak market position. Bingham assembled a senior leadership team of private sector experts and civil servants with the skills required to think about how to make vaccines, test them, deliver them, and build long-term resiliency into the system. Beyond building a diversified portfolio of vaccine candidates, the team took a commercial approach and aimed to make the UK the best global client possible. While there were some frictions due to the unusual setup of the taskforce, the team's work was an unequivocal success. The UK became the first country to approve and administer a COVID-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial context, and had placed its bets on safe and effective vaccines.