Project seeks to produce vaccines by year end.
President Trump has established a Manhattan Project-style initiative to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. He has named Moncef Slaoui, the former head of Glaxo-SmithKline Plc’s vaccines division and Gustave Perna, a four-star general to lead the project, known as Operation Warp Speed.
The project seeks to produce 300 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year, hastening development by simultaneously testing many different candidates and beginning production before they’ve completed clinical trials.
The program will pull together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, and the military to try to cut the development time for a vaccine by as much as eight months. Slaoui will serve as the program’s chief adviser while Perna will work as the chief operating officer.
A separate report suggests that thousands of doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine may have been sitting in a Houston, Texas, freezer for four years that was initially developed to combat SARS but was shelved when people lost interest in the disease and clinical human trials dried up.
As the Lord Leads, Pray with Us…
- For wisdom and courage for the two new leaders of Operation Warp Speed.
- For the many laboratories that are developing a vaccine that will work against the COVID-19 virus.
- About already-developed vaccines, such as the one in Houston, that could prove to be effective against the coronavirus.
Sources: Bloomberg News, Newsmax, USA Today
