Inside the Push For a Vaccine in the U.S.

in virus News today. Supporters of President Trump chanted fire Fauci at the president's campaign rally Sunday night. The President made comments hinting he would fire Fauci, the director of a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, after the election. It's the latest attack on Fauci from the Trump white House, who criticized him on Sunday after Faucci warned in a Washington Post interview that the country was heading for a drawn out period of illness and death. Daily cases in

the US are surging as Tuesday's election approaches. The current wave of cases is bigger than the one scene in the spring. Goldman, Sachs and Deutsche Bank were among the companies that told UK staff that all but essential employees should work from home. England's nationwide lockdown will legally expire on December two, but the government says it will look at a range of indicators before easing restrictions. Large swaths

of Europe are also entering lockdown this week. Finally, a coronavirus vaccine under development from cure vac NV showed a good immune response in early trials, validating the biotech company's research into messenger RNA's ability to train the body's defenses. The most promising vaccine dose produced an immune response comparable to that found and recovered patients in an early stage test,

according to the German company. And now for today's main story, Operation warp Speed, the White House's effort to fast track of vaccine for COVID nineteen appears to be the conspicuous exception to the government's otherwise disastrous management of the pandemic. The project has cleared bureaucratic hurdles and awarded more than twelve billion dollars in vaccine related contracts, and has an

overall budget of as much as eighteen billion dollars. I spoke with reporter Cynthia Coons, who wrote in Bloomberg Business Week about what Operation Warp Speed is doing behind the scenes. So, Operation Warp Speed formally described as a public private partnership, but I was hoping you might just unpack this a little.

What is it exactly and how is it structured. Operation Warp Speed is a combination of a number of different government agencies that have come together, predominantly h h S, the Health and Human Services Division of the Administration, and the Department of Defense. So I think one of the more interesting things we've uncovered in our reporting is just how heavily involved the military is in the entire operation.

So it's basically a coming together of a variety of different parts of the government that might typically be involved in pandemic planning, but not necessarily in the sway. The US government doesn't typically help build supply chains for vaccines from scratch, but there's some expertise there within the government that comes from the from the military that Operation Warp Speed is drawing on to make this vaccine possible should

any of these vaccine candidates prove successful in combat and coronavirus. Now, there have been many accusations that the Trump administration has mismanaged the pandemic, perhaps with the exception being Operation Warp Speed. And what, in your opinion do you think has led

to this, what has made this program work well? One person said to me, which really stuck with me, was that Warp Speed really plays to Trump's strengths that he likes to manufacture things, that he likes to leverage his relationships within the business world, and that's where Operation Warp Speed really comes together. So well, it's definitely a conglomerate

of different entities of the US government. The active and the actual execution here is coming from the companies themselves, and so the government has given out billions and billions of dollars of contracts to these companies, Companies like Maderna, companies like Astra, Zeneca, J and J. They're large companies that are recipients of Operation Warp Speed money that they're using to help offset the costs of these very expensive, large trials that they need to do to prove the

vaccine is safe. So so in some sense that part of it plays to Trump's strengths, and another another part of it is very very good people have been appointed to the extent that months of SLOUGHI, who is a vaccine executive at Glaxo Smith client who spent years working on vaccines for public health crises, is running this operation. Having his expertise someone like him has been really pivotal.

And there are also very high level people within the military who have done a lot of logistics and operational support in major endeavors in the past. And so this combination of bringing in top talent in some of these very niche areas and this idea that Trump really liked, this company driven a approach made Operation work Speed that's very unique, somewhat potentially positive outlier in the broader federal

government response to COVID. And so let's get into perhaps the most public element right now of Operation Warp Speed, that is with vaccine development. How exactly has Operation Warp Speed been involved with choosing and of course supporting some of the various coronavirus vaccine candidates. One of the principal things Operation Warp Speed has done has given They've given a lot of money to big companies to support big, large scale trials, and you see some of the companies

doing six phase three trials. So the government has given away a decent amount of money in that regard. The other really interesting thing that we came upon was the amount of work the government had been doing to really help build the supply chain, so they have these They've used the Defense Production Act much more so than we initially realized, and and the way it works. As a company.

We talked to one small supplier of a type of vial who said they had a power outage at their supplier in Chicago in the middle of the summer and they didn't know how much that was going to slow them down, and so they brought this letter to the head of legal affairs at the energy company who turned

the lights on. That was it. They just prioritize that plan so that the work could get done to get the vials produced to continue to the supply chain that underpins the production of a vaccine would be up and running. So it's been very interesting. I've been told that the Army Corps of Engineers comes in and gets involved when needed.

They connects thedite permits. UH. The one of the main companies we focused on was Emergent because their contract manufacturer and they're working with J and J Astra and they've worked with Novavax so that's a big component of the

whole Warp Speed production capacity. It's it's half of the known companies right now that are working on vaccines are working with Emergent and so in emergence case, they had prop pieces uh supply um parts duck in Sweden and basically the government got involved and lo and behold they were able to expedite supply items that might not have arrived until November December, and they got them in August.

So they're making vaccines right now. Whether or not we end up getting those vaccines are going to depend on the science, but the government's very much backing the production of vaccines so that the supply is there. It's a it's a big bet on at least being ready. If one of these vaccines is successful. What happens in terms of distribution. How will Operation warp Speed be involved with if a vaccine is approved distributing it throughout the US.

Operation warp Speed is saying right now they are ready so that a vaccine can start to be distributed within twenty four hours of approval, which is quite rapid. They're working with McKesson and some large pharmacy chains in order to make sure that's possible. They're going to be tracking as far as I understand the dosage so that people are notified. Any of these vaccines are two dose, so they're going to be notifying people if they need to

get their second dose of a given vaccine. They have a legacy computer system from the c d C that they're upgrading to make this sort of technology and tracking possible. They're building the systems to be able to track utilization and DOSA, be able to remind people if they need to get a second dose. And they're very much focused. They've been very public about this idea that they want to make sure they reach all Americans, so they're going

to remote parts. They're trying to build the infrastructure so that people in remote parts of the US, in maybe rural America or islands, etcetera, are also able to get the vaccine. There are no way focused on only making this possible and the major metro centers where medical care is obviously more abundant. So I'd say that's it also been quite interesting to see how much attention has been

paid to that next leg of the journey. Of course, we're we're looking at a week of a presidential election, and and we may have a new administration um starting, So how might the outcome of the elected effect Operation Warp Speed. How might a Biden administration otherwise affect the

course of the program. So your question about distribution really hits on this because my understanding is that the bulk of Operation Warp Speeds work, at least from the perspective of them, getting the supply chain built up is going to be done by January, where we to have a new president inaugurated at that point. Uh, the next job

really after that is going to be disseminating this. I don't think any of these vaccines are likely to be rolling out until so it is really going to fall to the Biden administration if he were to succeed in the election. This week. He has said to us through a spokesman that a Biden administration be fully committed to Operation Warp Speed. And I'm sure that the Trump administration would be fully committed to Warp Speed to given that's been there. This whole thing has come together under the

Trump administration. So really, I think the question of distribution is is going to be what's left the piece of this. I think either administration is going to be dedicated to that piece of it. But definitely there could be some turmoil. There could be high level departures and different people are going to have to take over and take up the helm.

But I could see that being the only disruption is, you know, any personnel turnover, if anyone were to leave, if there's a different outcome where Biden wins the election. That was Cynthia Coons and that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to

help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Top four heads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Cynthia Coons. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.