Disease

VAXXERS

THE INSIDE STORY OF THE OXFORD ASTRAZENECA VACCINE AND THE RACE AGAINST THE VIRUS

SARAH GILBERT AND CATHERINE GREEN, WITH DEBORAH CREWE

Hodder, 352pp, £20

Laboratory scientists make unlikely public heroes and heroines; but in the age of Covid that’s just what has happened to some of them. Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green – two eminent but unassuming vaccinologists – found themselves the objects of a standing ovation at Centre Court on the first day of Wimbledon. They were two of the key figures in the Mark Honigsbaum. They tell their story in alternating chapters, and ‘are at pains to point out that they are not “big pharma” but two ordinary people who managed to pull off an extraordinary feat while dealing with the everyday stresses that come with being full-time mums and breadwinners in a notoriously insecure and poorly paid field’.