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Operation Warp Speed Makes Swift Progress
by Terri Moon Cronk, DOD News
October 13, 2020
In a telephone briefing with reporters, HHS policy deputy chief
of staff Paul Mango said, "We're very, very pleased with where we
are." He was joined on the media conference call by Dr. Janet
Woodcock, M.D., the director of the centers for drug evaluation
research at the Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Jay Butler,
the deputy director for infectious diseases at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
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Air Force Airman 1st Class Kokou Dekadjevi administers a COVID-19 test at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida on Aug. 10, 2020. Dekadjevi and the medical group’s diagnostic testing center employees administered more than 330 tests in a two-day span to 7th Special Forces Group soldiers returning from a deployment. (U.S. Air Force photo by Ilka Cole)
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Mango reminded
reporters that four of the six vaccine candidates are in phase III
clinical trials, and added that the Food and Drug Administration
continues to review vaccine safety information on the candidates.
"For all of these vaccines — all six vaccine candidates — we
are already manufacturing at industrial scale," he said, "Along the
way, we've encountered the normal what I would say scientific
obstacles that had to be overcome. We feel very good about having
done that. And now we're just waiting particularly for those that
are in phase III trials for the appropriate number of events to
occur so that those vaccines can be evaluated by the FDA."
Spotlight: Operation Warp Speed
Progress has also been made on vaccine distribution plans, he
said.
"We're in the process of actively engaging tens of
thousands of provider outlets for these vaccines," Mango said. "We
anticipate having collectively 65,000 [to] 75,000 points of
potential vaccination. Our [information technology] system is
knitting together a lot of the legacy systems that the CDC has had
in place for a long time [and] we're testing that, stress testing
it; we feel very good thus far about its capacity and its
robustness."
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Research microbiologist Brian Kearney harvests samples of coronavirus at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, Maryland
on March 3, 2020. This virus stock will be used to develop models of infection for coronavirus, as well as diagnostic tests, vaccines and therapeutics. (U.S. Army photo by William Discher)
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More than 40-million kits have been assembled to house the
vaccines, which are in warehouses, ready to go, Mango noted, adding
that undertaking was a large-scale logistical task that's also going
well.
Woodcock said two drug companies —
Eli Lilly and Regeneron — recently announced they
had completed study findings in outpatients. Both of the firms have
publicly announced they have submitted emergency-use authorizations
to the FDA based on early data, she said.
"In the meantime,
we continue to study the Lilly antibody in both inpatients and
outpatients in OWS-supported NIH active trials," she said. "We're
also, of course, looking at a whole range of other interventions to
manage complications of the infection."
Woodcock said the team feels as
though the early indications of antiviral activity and potential
impact on the clinical course of disease is very promising. "In the
meantime, we continue to study these antibodies and we plan to study
more of them in our master protocol."
"We've been preparing
for implementation of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine programs,"
Butler said. "Nationally, we believe it is a crucial next step as
part of our overall efforts to protect Americans, reduce the impacts
of the COVID-19 pandemic, and help restore some normalcy to our
lives in our country."
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