Manhattan Project 2020! Trump announces fast-track Operation Warp Speed to develop coronavirus vaccine by Jan 2021
The Trump administration's ambitious Manhattan Project-style effort called Operation Warp Speed has one clear goal: make a COVID-19 vaccine available as early as January 2021.
The project is bringing together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and the military to speed up the process. According to reports, US officials are looking at 14 potential coronavirus vaccines, hoping that at least one enters American markets by early January.
Over the next couple of days, experts will evaluate them and narrow the list down to as many as eight, which will then enter clinical trials. Reports suggest that Trump is heading the project.
While officials are also optimistic about having them out by the estimated timeline, they acknowledge that there is no guarantee that it will work. "Can I say with 100 percent certainty? No. There is a reasonable probability that one or more of these vaccines will be successful," one of the officials told NBC news.
If everything goes according to plan, a senior official told CNN that they plan to release 100 million doses of the vaccine available by November, 200 million doses by December and 300 million doses by January.
Countries are placing their bets on vaccines as they offer hopes of bouncing back to normalcy. Currently, researchers are working on 97 potential vaccines globally, which are at different stages of development. Nine of them are already being tested in humans trials.
The rush to develop vaccines
Vaccines take 10-15 years to develop. However, researchers have had a headstart, thanks to previous work on the SARS and MERS virus, cousins of the new coronavirus.
This headstart could reduce the timeline from 15 years to 18 months. During this short period, researchers will thoroughly evaluate them, making sure it is safe and effective.
However, Trump has rejected the standard timeline and is encouraging a breakthrough process, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, Michael Caputo, told Bloomberg.
Many experts have expressed their concerns over speeding up vaccines. If researchers are not allowed to evaluate them extensively, vaccines could backfire and malfunction, risking the lives of many, they fear.
"You really have to test a vaccine carefully and not just roll it out because people are clamoring for it with an epidemic underway," Dr Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, told PNAS.
Some worry that using metaphors to describe development could do some damage. "Using terms like Operation Warp speed does not help us because we have a very aggressive antivaccine lobby in America and their major assertion is that vaccines are not adequately tested for safety," Vaccine expert Dr Peter Hotez, told MSNBC.
However, others believe there is a way to roll out vaccines without compromising on safety and efficacy. "You don't wait until you get an answer before you start manufacturing — you at risk proactively start making it, assuming it's going to work, and if it does, then you can scale up and hopefully get to that timeline," Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, told NBC. "So we want to go quickly, but we want to make sure it's safe and it's effective. I think that is doable."