Will the speculative vaccine shopping spree ever end?

Somewhere, possibly in the land of big sheds, just off the M1 in Leicestershire, must be a burgeoning NHS surplus store. Its shelves will be groaning with ventilators and testing kits which turned out not to work, surgical gloves, bibs and masks which turned out to be defective – and quite possibly, in months to come, with millions of shots of vaccines which won’t be able to be used.

It was announced this morning that the government has signed up for 60 million doses of a vaccine being developed by GSK and Sanofi – although the financial details of the deal were not released. GSK says the vaccine will enter clinical trials this autumn and will – possibly – be ready for manufacture in the second half of 2021. This order is in addition to the 100 million shots of Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine, 30 million of a vaccine being developed by BioNtech and Pfizer and 60 million of a vaccine being developed by Valneva.