How did the UK become French vaccine firm's best customer?

The French media is asking questions about why a French pharma firm has promised 100 million doses of its in-development Covid vaccine to the UK, when not a single order has yet been placed by France or the EU.

The Franco-Austrian Valneva - based near Nantes - has had substantial UK government financial aid of £14m to scale up its production site at Livingston in Scotland.

It also had UK help to roll out phase one and two trials of its viral vector vaccine. Results of these are due in the coming weeks and it’s hoped production could start in late summer.

Valneva director general Franck Grimaud said on BFMTV: "When we announced that we were developing our vaccine last April, we contacted several governments and institutions. It was the UK which was the first to give a comprehensive response, and we signed a pre-accord with them in July."

"It’s a failure for France. It hurts to see this beautiful business taking off for the UK," says Christelle Morancais, president of the Pays de la Loire region, who says she alerted the French government last June. "This company had solutions. [French President Emmanuel] Macron says we are at war - well in war you need different methods from our bureaucratic, technocratic form-filling."

Les Echos financial daily says: "Why has the French government not expressed interest in the Valneva project, leaving it to the British government to offer financial support and - logically therefore - reap the benefits a privileged partner?"

Failing to extend a £20 lockdown benefit boost will harm the health of millions of people for decades, leading health organisations have told Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a letter.

Introduced last year, the £20-a-week uplift is due to end in April.

... it will only take one of those celebrating to be a carrier and there will be tens if not hundreds of case in a couple of weeks time

The Department of Health said: “Throughout the pandemic, the Government has put in place proportionate measures that have led to some of the toughest border regimes in the world.

Too afraid to admit they don't have a clue

The app has now been downloaded 21.63 million times, representing 56% of the eligible population aged 16+ with a smartphone...

As well as contact tracing and booking a test the app allows users to check their symptoms via the symptom checker. Coronavirus symptoms have been reported into the app over 1.4 million times...

Over 3.1 million test results have been entered into the app across England and Wales, of which 825,388 were positive. This is a combination of both tests booked through the app and test results manually entered into the app...

The app, which works as a part of the wider [NHSX, Serco, Dido Harding] Test and Trace programme...

Figures on the app’s wider features show users have checked into a venue over 103 million times. A total of 253 venues were identified as ‘at risk’ as a result of an outbreak...

We analysed the impact of the 1.7 million notifications sent by the app, and our statistical analysis showed that approximately 600,000 cases were averted...

Data on the NHS COVID-19 app will be published weekly alongside NHS Test and Trace data from Thursday 18 February...

• The downloads figure may well be accurate, but that says very little about actual continued usage or the numbers of people involved.
  
  
• Note how the greater majority of reporting has been self-entered! And from that, the follow-on contacting is a surprisingly small proportion of the number of those that have self-reported.
  
  
• And at multiple £100 Millions cost, that app as a 'services portal' is a ridiculous cost.
  
  
• How many more lives would be saved and how much less disruption would we enjoy from greatly better application of that £22,000 Million?
  
  
• Who has profited from that?
  

Stay safe folks!
Martin

• Cough, fatigue and headache were the most commonly reported symptoms from people who tested positive... Abdominal pain, diarrhoea and nausea were less commonly reported symptoms.
  
  
• Of those testing positive for COVID, (only) 38%, and upto 55% those people reported [noticing] having any symptoms.
  

AccuRx is a British software company working in the health sector. The company was co-founded by Jacob Haddad and Laurence Bargery, who met and subsequently founded the company at Entrepreneur First in 2016.
Accurx has raised £8.8m in funding from venture capital firm Atomico, as well as investors LocalGlobe and Entrepreneur First. Launched in February 2018 in a handful of surgeries, the start-up's Chain SMS service is now used in more than 1,400 GP surgeries around the UK.
How does accuRx keep the data secure? We transmit and store data in encrypted form. This means nobody else can read it without the right credentials. When stored, your data is encrypted in an extremely secure UK-based Microsoft Azure data centre.