With the first COVID-19 vaccine on the move in the US and a second close behind, the head of the initiative created to speed up the process rued political pressure on the approval process.
Moncef Slaoui of Operation Warp Speed was asked on Fox News Sunday about reports that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) head was on Friday told that his job was in jeopardy if the agency did not approve the first COVID-19 vaccine by day’s end.
If a telephone call along those lines between White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and FDA Administrator Stephen Hahn happened as reported, “I think it was useless and unfortunate, and so are some of the tweets,” Slaoui said.
US President Donald Trump tweeted directly to Hahn’s account on Friday, saying “Get the dam [sic] vaccines out NOW,” and “Stop playing games.”
FDA’s emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine followed hours later, and a day after a panel of independent experts convened by the FDA voted 17-4 that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks.
Public pressure “did never translate into any kind of interference of any sort” on Operation Warp Speed, said Slaoui, who spent 30 years in vaccine research at the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.
He said he “would expect the FDA would have worked the same way.”
The FDA’s decision on Friday set in motion a complicated immunization drive that is to launch across the country in coming days.
The first doses of the vaccine were to be delivered yesterday, and the initial delivery is expected to be completed in all 50 US states by tomorrow, said US Army General Gustave Perna, who serves as chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed.
Many states, including New Jersey, are to start injecting healthcare workers and nursing home residents today.
The FDA would consider a second vaccine candidate, from Moderna, at an advisory committee meeting on Thursday, and approval could come soon after.
More vaccines are expected to be brought to market next year, expanding the arsenal doctors would have to rein in a virus that has killed almost 300,000 Americans.
Hahn said the distrust many people have expressed in the government approval process was a “significant problem,” but that one that could be overcome with a commitment to transparency.
“The way we get through this is to achieve herd immunity,” Hahn said on Sunday on ABC’s This Week of combating COVID-19. “And that means we need to vaccinate a significant number of people in this country, including those who are hesitant.”
US National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said that some skepticism about the vaccines is “borne of potential interference from some source or another” that he said “did not determine the outcome.”
“I would like to plead to people who are listening to this, this morning, to really hit the reset button on whatever they think they knew about this vaccine that might cause them to be so skeptical,” Collins said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“Few if any vaccines that have ever been subjected to this level of scrutiny,” Collins said.
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