Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-11-02)

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BloombergBusinessweek

Here. It. Comes.

thegovernmentbehindtherequest.“It’salmostlikehaving

thatBat-Signal,”saysSyedHusain,whoheadsthecompa-

ny’scontractmanufacturingbusiness.“They’vebeena great

partnerforus.”

EmergentmightbetheultimateOperationWarpSpeed

company.InJuneitsecureda $628millionno-bidcon-

tracttoproduce vaccinesandtherapeutics,one ofthe

biggestallocationsofOWSfundingoutsideofthepharma-

ceuticalcompaniesactuallydevelopingthevaccines.It sub-

sequentlysigned$261millionincontractstomakedoses

forAstraZenecaPlcandthena $480millioncontractwith

JanssenPharmaceuticalsInc.,a subsidiaryofJohnson&

Johnson.Thosecompaniesarethemselvesrecipientsof

billion-dollar-plus OWS awards. Earlier in the year, Emergent

produced vaccines for trials by the biotechnology company

Novavax Inc., which subsequently received $1.6 billion from

On a late August day in an industrial corner of Baltimore

that had been mostly silenced by the pandemic, a red-

brick manufacturing plant was buzzing with activity. Deep

in the building, in a zone called Area 3, the stainless steel

shell of a bioreactor lay on its side, having just arrived from

Massachusetts. Employees had begun the task of making the

bioreactor operational. Within weeks it would be the center

of a production line for coronavirus vaccines.

When the owner of the plant, Emergent BioSolutions Inc.,

ordered the bioreactor, one supplier said some critical

parts wouldn’t arrive until November or December. And so

EmergentenlistedthehelpofOperationWarpSpeed,the

federalgovernment’smissiontoacceleratedevelopment

ofaCovid-19 vaccine. Officials working with OWS, a cou-

ple of whom are embedded with Emergent, called the sup-

plier to say the order couldn’t wait, throwing the weight of