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During the formal announcement of «Operation Warp Speed», led by former Moroccan pharmaceutical executive Moncef Slaoui, US President Donald Trump said that he is hopeful the body will have a coronavirus vaccine ready by the end of 2020.
Speaking at the White House, Friday, Trump presented Slaoui, who was officially appointed during the announcement, to help lead the United States efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Attending the briefing, Slaoui said that he has «very recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine».
«I have very recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine and this data made me feel even more confident that we'll be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020 and we will do the best we can», he said at a news conference with Trump on Friday.
Determining which vaccines to bet on
According to CNN, Slaoui, who also holds Belgian and American citizenships, met with Trump, Wednesday, at the White House, to confirm his appointment, after he was unanimously chosen to lead the operation. His mission will be to determine «which vaccines to bet on as the administration moves to manufacture more than one vaccine before trials are completed», CNN added.
Acting as chief adviser, Slaoui will be joined by Army General Gustave Perna who will be the chief operating officer for the project.
Recent data "made me feel even more confident" that a vaccine will be available by the end of 2020, Dr. Moncef Slaoui says. pic.twitter.com/ToAVI5ksHw
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 15, 2020
For the record, Slaoui’s appointment comes two weeks after Trump announced the move to quickly speed up production and organize plans to distribute a vaccine. «That means big and it means fast», Trump said, referring to the operation he compares to the Manhattan Project, a research and development project undertaken during World War II and resulted in the production of the first nuclear weapons.
A number of people have been considered over the past week for the position of chief vaccine officer in addition to Moncef Slaoui, said an official, including Elias Zerhouni, Algerian-American medical radiologist and former chief of the National Institutes of Health under President George W. Bush and Art Levinson, CEO of Calico.
Slaoui led the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine business from 2015 to 2017. He helped develop vaccines to prevent childhood rotavirus gastroenteritis, cervical cancer and shingles.
