No10's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance receives honour
Sir Patrick Vallance savages Boris over partygate: No10’s chief scientific adviser says it’s ‘very disappointing’ not ‘everyone stuck to the rules’ moments after receiving Covid honour from Prince William at Buckingham Palace
- Sir Patrick stuck knife into wounded PM day after narrow no confidence vote win
- Was speaking outside royal residence after picking up Order of the Bath honour
- Sir Patrick originally knighted in 2019 but new gong upgrades him to higher rank
Sir Patrick Vallance was officially made an Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in a ceremony today by the Duke of Cambridge Prince William
Sir Patrick Vallance today slammed the lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street as ‘very disappointing’ as he stuck the knife in to Boris Johnson after picking up a top honour at Buckingham Palace.
Speaking outside the royal residence after picking up the Order of the Bath medal, Sir Patrick said it was ‘really important at all stages that everyone stuck to the rules’.
But he said Partygate showed this ‘was not the case’.
The Government’s chief scientific adviser, who guided the country through the Covid pandemic, stood alongside Mr Johnson on countless occasions to explain why the public must follow social restrictions and lockdowns, alongside Professor Sir Chris Whitty.
Sir Patrick, 62, was today elevated to become a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath for his role in the Covid response.
He accepted the award from Prince William.
The Order of the Bath recognises the work of senior military officials and civil servants.
Sir Patrick was originally knighted back in 2019 but his new honour upgrades him to a higher rank.
Sir Patrick was named in the Government’s New Year Honours List 2022 for helping lead the response to Covid. Here is pictured with his wife Sophie Dexter after receiving his award
He was propelled to household fame by the Covid pandemic and was a regular feature of the daily televised Covid briefings during the pandemic.
Sir Patrick Vallance was born in 1960 in south-west Essex.
Abandoning an early ambition to be palaeontologist, a scientist who studies prehistoric life, he instead became an expert in medicine.
His personal research area was in diseases and biology of blood vessels.
After working at University College London, Sir Patrick joined British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline in 2006 and worked there until 2017.
He then became the Government’s chief scientific advisor in 2018 and was knighted the next year.
Sir Patrick is married to Sophie Dexter and has three children.
He was among the key scientists who spoke to the public about the virus during the now famous televised briefings from Government on the pandemic, often standing alongside the PM and ministers.
He received the upgrade as part of the Government’s New Year Honours List 2022 for having ‘led scientists tirelessly throughout the Covid response’ and for setting ‘clear expectations and parameters around the activities of SAGE’.
Fellow Covid scientists chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty, 55, and his former deputy, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, 57, also received honours.
Like Sir Patrick, Professor Whitty was also made a knight commander of the Order of the Bath.
Meanwhile, JVT, as he is affectionately known, became a knight bachelor, the standard level of knighthood. He was forced to miss out on his investiture ceremony last month due to catching Covid.
Sir Patrick’s response to the Covid pandemic has not been without controversy, however.
In March 2020 he was forced to defend the Government’s ‘herd immunity’ approach to not shutting down schools in the initial wave of Covid restrictions.
At the time he said the aim was to try and broaden the peak of the virus and build-up immunity within the population.
He was also criticised for presenting a now infamous chart in one of the televised briefings in October that year suggesting there could be a shocking 4,000 deaths per day by December 20 if pandemic restrictions were not imposed.
But the figures came from an outdated model based on a projection that there would be 1,000 deaths per day by the start of November.
In reality the daily average was lower than 200, meaning the prediction was five times too high.
Sir Patrick has also defended SAGE modelling which forecasted thousands of daily deaths during the Omicron wave.
Some anti-lockdown Tory MPs labelled these projections as ‘scare mongering’.
But Sir Patrick said it was his not his job to spread optimism but to give ministers the data they needed to make decisions.
The scientist has also been praised for saying Covid management must become similar to flu, where vulnerable segments of the population receive an annual vaccine for the virus rather than jabbing the population every few months.
MailOnline revealed last month that Sir Johnathan was forced to miss his knighthood ceremony after testing positive for Covid and needing to self-isolate.
Source: Read Full Article