IT took Emma Bolam nearly four hours to painstakingly place tiny virus particles into 500 vials to create the first vaccines for Covid-19.
Head to toe in protective clothing and wearing three pairs of gloves, she filled the first batch of the vaccine which reached “efficacy” last weekend — proving it stops people falling ill.
When we visited the Oxford University team this week, we discovered head of production Emma is among hundreds of specialists who have been working round the clock to help save lives.
Emma, 49, said: “Getting to this stage in nine months has been record breaking and so exciting.
"It’s never been done before and I’m so proud of the team.
“We filled the first batch of vaccine on April 2. I was working at an isolator with filtered, sterile air.
"I manually filled 500 vials with half a millilitre in each. It had to be the exact amount.
