Top Adviser To Operation Warp Speed Calls An October Vaccine 'Extremely Unlikely'

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is asking states to have a plan in place to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as late October — but that doesn't mean an effective treatment will be ready quite so soon.

In separate interviews Thursday with NPR, the chief scientific adviser to the Trump administration's vaccine development effort and the former director of the CDC's office of public health preparedness cautioned that an effective vaccine is likely still months away.

Dr. Moncef Slaoui is one of two men that President Trump has put in charge of Operation Warp Speed, which has a goal of developing a COVID-19 vaccine by January 2021. The former GlaxoSmithKline executive said having states prepared is "the right thing to do" in case a vaccine does become ready, but he acknowledged that having a vaccine by October or November was "extremely unlikely."

"There is a very, very low chance that the trials that are running as we speak could read before the end of October," Slaoui said. "And therefore, there could be — if all other conditions required for an Emergency Use Authorization are met — an approval. I think it's extremely unlikely, but not impossible. And therefore, it's the right thing to do, to be prepared in case."

Slaoui said he "firmly" believed a vaccine could be ready by the end of the year, and that "we may have enough vaccine by the end of the year to immunize probably I would say between 20 and 25 million people." He said immunizing the U.S. population as a whole would take until "the middle of 2021."

His assessment follows new CDC guidance, first reported by the New York Times on Wednesday, for states to prepare to distribute a vaccine to health care workers and other high-risk groups within a matter of weeks. In another letter, CDC Director Robert Redfield asked governors to fast-track permits and licenses in an attempt to make vaccine sites operational by Nov. 1, just two days before the presidential election.

Dr. Ali Khan, the former director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the CDC, called that timetable unlikely.

"I do not believe that this is going to be ready in a matter of weeks," he said.

Khan, who is now dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said the CDC's guidance was less a prediction, and more a typical action the agency takes to ensure that once a vaccine is ready, states can use it. ...