Matt Hancock has revealed that the Matt Damon film Contagion partly influenced the UK’s vaccine strategy.
The Health Secretary was quizzed on LBC about rumours that the Hollywood film, which features a virus-ridden pig, had inspired his approach to the country’s vaccine roll-out.
Responding with a laugh, Mr Hancock said the film was not the “primary source” of his strategy but that it had taught him that there would be a global scramble for any vaccine.
Mr Hancock, who overruled advice and ordered 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine rather than 30 million, insisted: “I wasn’t going to settle for less.”
He told LBC host Nick Ferrari: "In the film it shows that the moment of highest stress around the vaccination programme is not in fact before it's rolled out – when actually it’s the scientists and manufacturers working at pace – it's afterwards, when there is a huge row about the order of priority.
“So not only in this country did I insist that we ordered enough for every adult to have their two but also we asked for that clinical advice on that prioritisation very early and set it out in public…so that there was no big row about the order of priority.”
He also told ITV's Good Morning Britain that the film gave him “insight” into potential international vaccine pressures.
He said: "I did watch the film - it is actually based on the advice of very serious epidemiologists.
"So, one of the things I did early, was insist that when we had the Oxford vaccine, and we backed it from the start and that was great, I insisted that UK production protects people in the UK in the first instance. And, as the UK Health Secretary, that is my duty.
"At the same time we are making it available at cost to the rest of the world - not enough people give AstraZeneca credit for that, other vaccine companies are making tens of billions of pounds from their vaccines."
In the early days of the crisis, Sky News reported that the Mr Hancock regularly reminded advisers of the film.
“He was constantly referring to the end of the film,” a former Department of Health and Social Care adviser told Sky. “He was always really aware from the very start, first that the vaccine was really important, second that when a vaccine was developed we would see an almighty global scramble for this thing.”
The 2011 Steven Soderbergh flick stars include Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet.
