Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-11-02)

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November 2, 2020

Amid the horrors of the pandemic

and America’s mishandling of it, some

good news: Operation Warp Speed

could produce a vaccine soon

By Stephanie Baker and Cynthia Koons

Illustration by Maria Chimishkyan

OperationWarpSpeedisn’tanagencyassuch,butrather

a mechanismtocoordinateamongprivatecompaniesandan

arrayofU.S.governmentbodies:theDepartmentofDefense,

HHS,theFoodandDrugAdministration,theCentersfor

DiseaseControlandPrevention,andbeyond.Morethan

600 peopleinHHSand 90 peoplefromtheDODareinvolved.

“It’sa coordinationactivitythathelpstocutthroughthe

bureaucracyfaster,”saysPaulStoffels,chiefscientificofficer

atJohnson& Johnson.OWShasawardedmorethan$12bil-

lioninvaccine-relatedcontractsandhasanoverallbudget

ofasmuchas$18billion.

Asif thelogisticsandsciencearen’tchallengingenough,

PresidentTrumphasdialedupthepressuretogeta vaccine

clearedbeforetheNov.3 election.FDACommissionerStephen

HahndashedthosehopesinlateSeptemberwhenhedrew

uptoughnewsafetyguidelinesforapprovingcoronavirus

OWS. Emergent is in business with three of the six vaccine
makersOWSis knowntohavebacked.
Overthepastdecade,Emergentturneditselfintoa
business the U.S. government couldn’t live without, the sole
producerofapprovedanthraxandsingle-dosesmallpoxvac-
cinesstockpiledforemergencies.Whenthenovelcorona-
virus hit earlier this year and the U.S. government went
hunting for surge capacity to make vaccines, it turned to
Emergent. “This was actually a kind of global race to secure
manufacturing capacity,” says Paul Mango, deputy chief
of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human
Services and a key figure at OWS. “We knew we would need
an enormous amount of manufacturing capacity to get this
done—hundredsofmillionsofdosesina time that has never
been doneinhistory.Therewasn’ta lotof idle manufactur-
ing capacitylaying around in the U.S.”