Russia’s declaration that it has a coronavirus vaccine pales in comparison to the strict bar set by the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed effort to produce a safe and effective vaccine by January 2021, administration officials said Thursday. Officials also disclosed that the list of who will be first in line for the vaccine will be announced by the end of September.
“Every vaccine expert in the world looking at this has been quite concerned about whether it was a wise decision,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told the Washington Examiner of the Russian effort. “Some have even called it Russian roulette.”
Speaking on a press call, Collins says the joint Department of Defense and Health and Human Services effort has, so far, invested billions of dollars into possible vaccines, manufacturing, therapeutics, and diagnostics.
Just in the past two weeks, OWS signed contracts for more than $4.5 billion to bankroll efforts by GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna.
That brings the total vaccines the U.S. government has invested in to six, including two that are in phase three trials with tens of thousands of participants.
The Russian vaccine was declared a success Tuesday after completing a phase one trial with roughly 100 people.
“If that was the standard, we would have declared success several months ago because we’ve had that various successful phase one trials,” said Collins. “But that basically is the start of a path, which if you really want people to believe that the vaccine is being safe and being effective.”
He added: “They effectively skipped over two very fundamental parts of the development of the vaccine to confidently trust what the people need. Why did they decide to do that other than to declare victory early? I’m not sure.”
Collins said Russia’s vaccine is based on an adenovirus vector, similar to the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines the government has invested in.
Collins and HHS deputy chief of staff for policy Paul Mango, a U.S. Army veteran, told journalists that OWS is on pace to have tens of millions of FDA-approved vaccine doses by January.
“We are absolutely on track for hitting all of our milestones on Operation Warp Speed,” said Mango. “This means making billions of dollars in investments with the promise of saving tens of thousands of lives and achieving a multitrillion-dollar return.”
OWS kicked off May 15 with a White House announcement by President Trump alongside HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
At the time, Trump promised 300 million vaccines by Jan. 1, 2021, and Esper said the DOD would deliver on that promise, managing the complicated logistics effort.
On Thursday, the administration officials said that the U.S. government is paying for vaccines and their distribution, while private insurers would be responsible for administering the vaccine. Trump has already set aside money so that uninsured individuals will receive the vaccine without charge.
Who comes first
Administration officials Thursday emphasized that they could not guarantee that a vaccine would be ready by the first of the year, but they were optimistic that several were on track for tens of millions of doses, though not the 300 million doses promised by the president.
That means priorities for who will get the vaccine first are being discussed.
“There’s obviously an important set of questions here about who would be prioritized,” said Collins, who described a panel convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Academy of Sciences to rank which people get to be first in line.
“That would probably include such people as the elderly, nursing homes, healthcare providers, other people at high risk with chronic illnesses,” he said.
“In general, military members, particularly those who are out defending our country, are considered to have special priority, but is that more so or less so than other priority groups like healthcare providers?” he said. “That’s not an easy question to ask or answer.”
Collins said the priority list will be ready for public discussion after Labor Day, with a final list determined by the end of September.
