Learnings from the vaccines taskforce: an apotheosis in mission, purpose and handling risk

The Vaccines Task Force was established by the UK government in March 2020, with the objective of securing early access to effective COVID-19 vaccines for the UK population and internationally. The VTF was successful in securing the earliest access to the Oxford/Astra Zeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, allowing the UK to be the first country in the world to deploy an approved COVID-19 vaccine. The VTF also played a critical role in supporting efforts to distribute vaccines globally, as one of COVAX's earliest and largest donors. This article presents the perspectives of senior members of the VTF on the features of the task force model which enabled this success, and considers lessons for when and how a similar approach should be applied to other public health and public policy challenges. We seek to identify principles for mission led government, and implications for how the structure and apparatus of governance can be organised to support this, including the application of the Task Force model where appropriate.