The government program dubbed Operation Warp Speed announced Thursday that two coronavirus vaccines had entered phase three trials while noting therapeutics were also on track for widespread availability by the fall.
“An exciting week for Operation Warp Speed,” said one senior administration official who briefed the media Thursday on the progress of the joint Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services program.
The two vaccine efforts that entered phase three trials Monday were Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, both of which have sizable government contracts to secure hundreds of millions of coronavirus doses.
“These results are really promising in terms of their immune response to COVID 19 infection,” said another administration official, who compared the body’s response to the vaccine with that of a naturally occurring infection.
“Those responses are at least equivalent and sometimes even better than the immune response from naturally occurring infection,” he said.
OWS was kicked off by President Trump at the White House May 15 and promises to deliver 300 million vaccines to people in the United States by year’s end as well as develop therapeutics to treat the infection.
Officials also noted a $1.95 billion no-risk investment in Pfizer to secure 100 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine should the vaccine be approved by the Food and Drug Administration by early 2021.
In all, officials said they expect more supply than needed and the possibility of multiple vaccines ready simultaneously.
OWS officials, however, said they are walking a fine line between getting people “excited” about the prospect of a vaccine as early as the fall while also not overhyping expectations.
“We are walking a very fine line,” one official said. “We don’t know in whom these vaccines are going to work.”
While expressing cautious optimism, the officials declared “uncertainty” remains with regard to vaccine effectiveness in different age groups and minorities. However, officials said in a positive sign, minorities are signing up for early trials at high rates.
Once ready, the official said the government will be “pushing the vaccines out” to places such as nursing homes, front-line healthcare workers, and meatpacking plants.
Another official said the DOD logistics role is to plan for all contingencies.
“We excel at operational planning,” said the official, a former military infectious diseases physician.
Added another official: “The DOD is handling all the logistics of getting the vaccines to the right place at the right time in the right condition.”
Department of Defense logistics include managing the manufacturing and distribution of vaccines and kits, whereas the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will work with states and track vaccinated individuals, and the private sector will administer the vaccines.
Updating comments from the last OWS press briefing two weeks ago, the administration officials said the race to produce therapeutics at scale is on track, with 500,000 doses of remdesivir expected by the end of September.
About 40,000 people who have recovered from the coronavirus have also donated convalescent plasma, which is used to treat patients. Officials said Trump was helping to promote more convalescent plasma blood donations in order to reach the goal of 175,000 units by August and 500,000 units by the fall.
