Pfizer operation warp speed how to#

The first UK injections of a fully tested COVID-19 vaccine were given in early December. “It has shown that the development process can be accelerated substantially without compromising on safety.” New ways of making vaccines, such as by using messenger RNA (mRNA), have been validated by the COVID-19 response, he adds. “It shows how fast vaccine development can proceed when there is a true global emergency and sufficient resources,” he says. The COVID-19 experience will almost certainly change the future of vaccine science, says Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. These are sorely needed: diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and pneumonia together kill millions of people a year, and researchers anticipate further lethal pandemics, too. It’s tempting to hope that other vaccines might now be made on a comparable timescale. That speed of advance “challenges our whole paradigm of what is possible in vaccine development”, says Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida in Gainesville. And on 2 December, a vaccine made by drug giant Pfizer with German biotech firm BioNTech, became the first fully-tested immunization to be approved for emergency use. To hope for one even by the summer of 2021 seemed highly optimistic.īut by the start of December, the developers of several vaccines had announced excellent results in large trials, with more showing promise. The fastest any vaccine had previously been developed, from viral sampling to approval, was four years, for mumps in the 1960s. Additionally, the nearly 2 billion dollars awarded to Pfizer will go a long way in the manufacturing and distribution of the Pfizer vaccine in development.When scientists began seeking a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in early 2020, they were careful not to promise quick success. But it also appears to undermine the claim that Pfizer is operating entirely outside Operation Warp Speed.Ī senior administration official told Yahoo News that since “the early days of March when President Trump convened pharmaceutical companies at the White House, Pfizer has been a part of the incredible public-private partnership forged to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Technically, that agreement has nothing to do with the development of the vaccine. While other pharmaceutical companies did take federal funds to develop a vaccine, Pfizer declined to do so, the only one of the major prospective developers to go it alone.Īt the same time, on July 22, Pfizer agreed to a $1.95 billion deal with the Trump administration “for large-scale production and nationwide delivery of 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in the United States following the vaccine’s successful manufacture and approval.” Operation Warp Speed was started in the spring as “a public-private partnership to facilitate, at an unprecedented pace, the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 countermeasures,” according to the Trump administration’s own description of the program. Still, the issue is somewhat more complicated than what social media may lead one to believe. President-elect Joe Biden meets with members of the Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board in Wilmington, Del., on Monday. Trump will want to claim credit for any successes in the coming months, while his detractors will point to forces - private industry, in the Pfizer case - beyond his influence. Vaccines and therapeutics could radically change the course of the pandemic, but they have to be developed, manufactured and distributed. President-elect Biden, meanwhile, is moving ahead with a transition.Īll this is happening as coronavirus cases mount across the land. Trump has still refused to concede the presidential election.

Pfizer operation warp speed how to#

The row over Warp Speed is part of what will be a near-certain dispute between the Trump and Joe Biden camps over how to handle the pandemic. The assertion infuriated supporters of the president, who had been promising a vaccine for months, and was also challenged by some who pointed out that the company is on track to receive almost $2 billion from the administration for production.

government, or from anyone,” Kathrin Jansen, the company’s vice president for vaccine research, told the Times. We have never taken any money from the U.S.

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