More than 200 scientists at one of the UK's most secure labs are already preparing for the next pandemic.

At the high-security, Porton Down laboratory complex in Wiltshire, a team of scientists is developing vaccines as insurance against a new pandemic caused by a disease they refer to as 'Disease X'.

The scientists don't know what will cause the outbreak, but have drawn up a list of animal viruses capable of spreading to humans, to begin work on a vaccine.

Scientists have set a target of 100 days for the development of the vaccine, while the COVID jab took a year.

The Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre at Porton Down has been expanded to take on the work after it had originally focused on testing the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine against new variants

Scientists are now involved in monitoring several high-risk pathogens, including bird flu, monkeypox and hantavirus – a disease spread by rodents.