Operation Warp Speed promised to do the impossible. How far has it come?

Operation Warp Speed pledged to do the impossible. How far has it come? With billions of federal dollars already spent on the effort, it’s possible to take stock of the initiative’s progress, or lack thereof. Helen Branswell STAT

It’s called Operation Warp Speed. And — regardless of one’s politics, one’s level of concern about Covid-19, or one’s views of therapeutics and vaccines — it inarguably ranks as one of the most ambitious scientific endeavors in modern U.S. history.

Is it working?

Roughly five months after top U.S. health officials coalesced around the idea of a public-private effort to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics, an answer to that question remains out of reach. But with billions of federal dollars already spent on the effort, it’s possible to take stock of the initiative’s progress, or lack thereof.

Here’s an assessment of the work so far.

If all goes well, the fast-tracking of vaccine development, which normally takes years, will have been telescoped down to about a year. To date, the fastest a vaccine was ever developed was four years.

Operation Warp Speed, or OWS, has already spent about $10 billion to help vaccine makers develop their candidates and build out production capacity to make vaccines at commercial scale. An innovation of this process: The vaccine makers are already producing doses, before they even know if the vaccines work. The idea is that if a vaccine is shown to be protective, use of it can start immediately. Moncef Slaoui, the scientific head of OWS, told STAT last week that the initiative has already started to stockpile upward of hundreds of thousands of doses. 

“That number will ramp up as the scale goes up, and that machine, if you wish, warms up,” he said.

Contracts with six manufacturers have been announced; another one or two may be coming, Slaoui said.

There have been ripple effects, however. In placing itself at the front of the line to receive vaccine doses from the OWS manufacturers, the United States has ignited a vaccine nationalism wildfire, which is reaching conflagration status. Wealthy governments have locked down more than 4 billion doses of vaccines so far, with the United States topping the list with commitments for 800 million initial doses and options on another 1.6 billion doses; new bilateral purchase agreements are announced almost daily. 

The World Health Organization and other global health agencies have argued that early access to vaccines should be shared across the nations of the world to help protect health workers, but the U.S. position has been that it will vaccinate Americans first, and share second. “We want to get our oxygen mask on first and then we’re going to help the people around us,” an unnamed administration official told Science in May.  ...