White House names heads of ‘warp speed’ vaccine effort
The officials said four-star Army General Gustave Perna had also been selected to help oversee “Operation Warp Speed.” Slaoui will act as the chief adviser and Perna will serve as the chief operating officer overseeing logistics.
The appointments come two weeks after Trump announced the operation to quickly ramp up production and organize distribution plans for a forthcoming vaccine, which experts say is still months or years away.
The effort had been overseen by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and their agencies will remain involved in the effort, officials said.
A number of people were considered over the past week for the vaccine chief position in addition to Slaoui, one official said, including Elias Zerhouni, the former head of National Institutes of Health under President George W. Bush and Art Levinson, the CEO of Calico.
Slaoui headed GSK’s global vaccines business from 2015-2017. Before that he acted as its longtime chairman of global research and development. He helped develop vaccines to prevent infantile rotavirus gastroenteritis, cervical cancer and shingles.
The goal of Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” — which may prove impossible to meet — is to make 100 million doses of the vaccine available by November, 200 million doses by December and 300 million doses by January, a senior administration official has told CNN.
Scientists who are part of the Trump administration’s coronavirus vaccine project have identified 14 vaccines to focus on for development, according to a senior administration official. Those involved in the effort expect to have six to eight of the vaccines being tested make it to subsequent rounds of trials, the official said.
Officials hope to have three to four vaccines make it through final testing and be made available, but that depends on how the testing and clinical trials proceed and how successful they are.
BARDA has issued close to $1 billion in grants to Moderna and Johnson & Johnson to develop a vaccine.
While the task force has discussed these issues over the past two months, there hasn’t been a central figure to coordinate them specifically. Fauci, in his role at the NIH, has been focused on vaccine development, but his other roles on the task force have also occupied his time.
