Sign up here for our daily coronavirus newsletter on what you need to know and subscribe to our Covid-19 podcast for the latest news and reviews.
Moncef Slaoui was exploited by the Trump administration in May to lead a Manhattan-style effort to drastically reduce the time required to develop a coronavirus vaccine and produce hundreds of millions of doses for the American people.
Renowned immunologist and former head of the vaccine division GlaxoSmithKline Plc is a bit of a celebrity in the pharmaceutical world. He took on the role of Chief Scientific Adviser to Operation Warp Speed with two conditions: “Full and interference-free power of attorney.”
Slaoui, 61, sees the rapid development of several vaccines and the manufacture of millions of doses as an unprecedented success. However, a slow and confusing launch frustrated millions of Americans and led the Biden administration to promise to speed things up. Slaoui said he was troubled by the failure to obtain more gunfire.
“A vaccine is useless if it stays on a shelf,” he said.
Speaking to Bloomberg after resigning earlier this month as a US pandemic response counselor at the request of the Biden administration, Slaoui reflected on a fractured health care system that he suggests is responsible for managing the pandemic. doses.
His remarks were edited for clarity and readability:
Bloomberg: What do you think about the Biden administration’s goal of vaccinating 100 million doses in 100 days?
Moncef Slaoui: 100 million doses in 100 days are honestly below the plans we had. We had 100 million people vaccinated by then. That means two doses. At least in terms of production and supply, there will be an absolute 200 million doses produced by the end of March or mid-April. So if the ambition is to use only half of them, then this is the ambition. I hope that this goal is achieved and far exceeded.
Bloomberg: Why was the gap between the doses of vaccine distributed and the doses administered so great? Of the 39.8 doses administered in the US, only 19.8 million photographs have been administered so far, according to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker.
Slaoui: Having lived in Europe and now in the US, clearly the health systems are as different as the opposites. The problem in the US is that the system is so fragmented, there are so many health care providers, so many health insurers, so many systems, so many jurisdictions, and people move a lot more with each other than people move in. Europe. It is very difficult to send a coherent message to people and it is difficult to mobilize everyone at the same time in the health system to do something.
The way we did it, and it clearly turned out to be a problem, was to say, because we can’t align all these systems, to work on them, to empower them. I was part of an administration whose worldview was based on less centralization.
Bloomberg: Why has the Trump administration’s approach to working in the states not been successful?
Slaoui: What was a surprise to me, honestly, was that I went to health administration officials in many jurisdictions and states. I spent two or three hours with them in person and countless hours on calls. I explained that we would have vaccines. There will be a limited number of doses. There will be a prioritization process and we will allocate doses to each state based on population. And then every state and health system has to tell us where to deliver them.
Every week, a health system in New York or California would say it sends 200 doses to this zip code, 300 to the other, and 500 or a thousand to this hospital, and so on. How is it possible for the health system to say so accurately that they want 200 here, 500 there, 700 here, and when we deliver them with 99.9% accuracy, it turns out they can’t even immunize people?
The assumption was that these places would be ready for immunization and, honestly, we weren’t told, we don’t have the resources to do it. So this remains a puzzle for me.
Bloomberg: What could Operation Warp Speed have done differently to reach its goal of delivering 20 million doses by the end of 2020?
Slaoui: I do not deny that this was far less than our goal. That we missed him. In terms of the discovery of vaccines, their development and their manufacture, we have gone faster than ever. But a vaccine is useless if it stays on the shelf. It is clear that it must end in the arms of the people.
Maybe it would have helped to have a hundred stadiums where people could come and be immunized. Or using 200,000 soldiers to come and immunize people in tents. Maybe that’s how you do it. The approach we have in our plan is that, as soon as we pass phase 1a, that restricted population, we will enter pharmacies. There is a pharmacy less than 10 miles from 90% of Americans. As we reach those populations, which is happening now, the rate of immunization will increase. At this time, we reach one million people a day and will continue to grow based on the previous plan.
Bloomberg: One previous interview with Bloomberg, you said that Pfizer Inc. turned to the US government gain priority access to raw materials so that it can deliver 100 million doses by the second quarter of this year. The US government has launched Law on the production of defense for this purpose? And what would that mean for the relationship between the US government and Pfizer?
Slaoui: Pfizer gets everything they asked for. We used an 18 times different DPA to speed up production. With DPA comes the opportunity to have priority access to any materials you need. The consequence of this is that the government has a much clearer view of what Pfizer is doing with these materials. There is an obligation to use those products purchased through a DPA for the manufacture of vaccines for the US and this really creates much more transparency around Pfizer plants than it existed before.
Bloomberg: Anthony Fauci said he felt it “Somewhat” released now that he no longer worked for the Trump administration. How do you reflect the time spent for the White House?
Slaoui: The day I interviewed to take over the role, I proposed two conditions: full power of attorney and no interference. I remember saying, “I don’t know the bureaucracy, I don’t know how this world works, and I won’t learn how it works. I will just focus on the goal and run with it. And they said, “Perfect, that’s what we want.”
When the president said, “Do you think you can have this data before election day?” I have always said, Mr President, there is no way to know. Whoever tells you it’s possible doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And whoever tells you it’s not possible doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If he intervened, I would raise my hand and resign.
I know Tony very well, I respect him and I sympathize with him. I would say to the system, please let science dictate what needs to be done.