Rick Bright, the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, told Congress on Thursday that having a vaccine ready for public use in a few months was “very unlikely,” despite White House claims that a vaccine is imminent.
“There’s a lot of optimism. There’s a lot of hope, but that doesn’t make a vaccine. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” Bright said.
Bright made his first appearance before Congress in a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing after filing a whistleblower complaint against the Department of Health and Human Services. In his complaint, Bright said that officials at HHS ignored his early warnings about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak and about pushing unproven treatments.
The Trump administration and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, have said that researchers have fast-tracked vaccine development in hopes of having one ready by 2021. Though Fauci has suggested that the earliest a vaccine could be proven effective and ready would be one year to 18 months from now, Bright said it will take much longer.
“My concern is if we rush too quickly and consider cutting out critical steps, we may not have a full assessment of the safety of that vaccine,” he said. “I still think 12 to 18 months is an aggressive schedule. And I think it’s going to take longer than that to do so.”
He also alleged that the Trump administration had not devised a plan to distribute a vaccine once one is finally proven effective.
“We need to have a strategy and plan in place now to make sure that we can not only fill that vaccine, make it, distribute it, but administer it in a fair and equitable plan,” Bright said. “We don’t have that yet.”
Bright said in April that he was demoted from his post as the director of BARDA after pushing for more evidence regarding hydroxychloroquine, the drug touted by President Trump as a possible treatment for COVID-19.
Trump administration officials, Bright said, were “rushing blindly towards unproven drugs” that come with serious and sometimes fatal side effects and pushing scientists to fund companies with political connections.
While Bright was testifying before the House committee, Trump spoke to reporters on the South Lawn and said that Bright was “an angry, disgruntled employee” who “didn’t do a very good job.”
