By cuckooshoe
An article in the BBC News Section (under Health) says
“Parts of the UK could become home to mosquitoes capable of spreading dengue fever, chikungunya and zika virus by the 2040s and 2050s, health officials warn.”
Mention of the chikungunya virus rang a bell and prompted me to look up Valneva! Valneva is the French pharmaceutical company, some may recall, who received a termination notice in September 2021 from the UK Government in relation to the supply of its Covid-19 vaccine.
The article below is from the Daily Express and is dated 20th November 2023 –
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-enterprise-claw-back-millions-31477524
“Scottish Enterprise claw back millions from Valneva over failed Covid vaccine but public money still on the line”
continues –
“As of now, £4.3m has been paid out, with this being halted when the coronavirus jab production was stopped. Instead, a new agreement was reached between the two organisations earlier this year, with the total amount due being reduced down to £11.8m, for work being done on its Chikungunya and Japanese Encephalitis vaccines.”
continues –
” Valneva had planned to sell its mothballed Almeida facility in Livingston but will now be using it to produce its Japanese encephalitis vaccine and chikungunya vaccine candidate.”
The last paragraph –
” A Scottish Enterprise spokesman said: “Our funding support for Valneva’s new state-of-the-art vaccine development facility secured the long-term future of the site in Livingston, and supported the company towards the US approval received just last week for the world’s first Chikungunya vaccine.”
Well done Scottish Enterprise!
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
That would be the Covid vaccine production facility the British sabotaged during their little spat with the French over channel islands fishing rights? But the real reason was to prevent highly sought after covid vaccine production capability in Scotland.
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I am surprised that BBC Scotland and other parts of the Scottish hating media have not twisted this into: ‘Is Scotland about to become a breeding ground for malaria?’
PS in the late 1940s some zoologists from Glasgow University were on a field trip in the Kenya/Uganda/Tanganyika (as it was known then) and, as an aside from the main focus of their study, they identified the Zika virus in, I think, Chimpanzees. At the time, there was no known infection of humans. The discovery was simply part of the appendices to the main paper and lay in the University archive until about 6/7 years ago, the reference was found by someone going through research papers. Since the final decades of the 20th century more infective agents have found to be crossing the species barrier.
As far as I know, the discovery in the 1940s did not lead directly to any vaccine or other antiviral, but it is interesting to know that Scottish scientists discovered and identified the features of a virus.
This has never been reported in any of the Scottish media. I read it in an article in the GU Alumni newsletter about the university’s archive. Would any current ‘Scottish’ journalists have actually attended Glasgow University? Probably too provincial and scummy for them or, perhaps they could not meet the entry requirements.
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