Vaccines minister says first booster doses will go to the top four priority groups, which includes care home staff, NHS workers and clinically extremely vulnerable
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The former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said he believes the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 likely escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.
Reuters reports:
“I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped,” Robert Redfield, who headed the CDC in the Trump administration, said in a televised interview with CNN. “It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker,” he said.
Redfield said that he thought it unlikely a disease that originated in bats – as many experts believe – so swiftly “became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission,” but added that he was not saying release of the virus was intentional.
Related: All hypotheses on Covid-19 origins still being investigated, says WHO boss
Boris Johnson has attributed the UK’s vaccine success to “capitalism” and “greed”. Though these were crude remarks, writes Mariana Mazzucato, a professor of economics at UCL, if the UK prime minister’s words are any indication of his vision for how the country can recover from the pandemic, there are worrying implications for the country’s policies at home and abroad.
Related: Capitalism won’t save us from Covid, no matter what Boris Johnson might think | Mariana Mazzucato
