WASHINGTON – House Democrats have begun investigating “Operation Warp Speed,” the Trump administration’s attempt to fund the rapid creation and deployment of a coronavirus vaccine and therapeutic treatments, with a lack of transparency and potentially “serious ethical issues” “related to his chief adviser, according to correspondence released by a commission overseeing the response of the government’s coronavirus.
Rep. James Clyburn, DS.C., chair of the House Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus, sent letters this week to Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and two advisers to the Warp Speed effort to ask for more information about what Clyburn called an “opaque” process that could undermine “public confidence” in any eventual faxing.
Some $ 9 billion in federal funds have so far been allocated to the development of a vaccine against the virus, which has confirmed some confirmed cases in America and killed at least 167,000, according to statistics followed by NBC News.
“A lack of transparency in the development of a coronavirus vaccine, especially at a faster timeline, could contribute to the growth of anti-vaccination sentiment,” Clyburn said. HHS officials are scheduled to deliver a briefing Thursday afternoon on the status of vaccine development.
Trump has made rapid approval of a fax a top priority, saying as recently as last week that one would be ready “before the end of the year, much sooner.” He also suggested that a vaccine could be approved by November 3.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a top White House adviser on the coronavirus pandemic, was more measured, saying he was “cautiously optimistic” that the US could have an effective vaccine against COVID-19 starts next year.
HHS spokesman Michael Caputo, in an email to NBC News, called the investigation a ‘partisan attack on life-saving vaccine development.’
The Warp Speed team is led by Dr. Moncef Slaoui, who headed the fax department at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. Contracts were awarded for vaccine development to GSK and Moderna, companies in which he had financial stakes worth millions.
In a letter to Slaoui, who joined the Warp Speed effort in May and promised to take a $ 1 salary, Clyburn suggested he was “willing to reap financial benefits” from all the stock gains associated with it. federal contract awarded to GSK.
In July, the administration secured a $ 2.1 billion joint agreement with GSK and the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi to supply the US government with 100 million doses of an experimental vaccine. Slaoui had about $ 10 million in GSK securities recently in May, when he shot down his stake in Moderna, a month after securing a contract with the federal government and under public pressure.
A senior administration official said HHS ethics officers have determined that Slaoui complies with departmental ethics standards. Slaoui has resigned from his position on the board of Moderna and committed to donating to cancer research all the value that comes from his shares between when he joined Warp Speed and when the shares were sold, he said. civil servant. Since Slaoui is not a federal employee, he is exempt from federal disclosure rules that require him to share his outside positions and shares.
Slaoui has also promised to donate any value of its GSK shares to NIH above the ‘average pharmaceutical index’, the official said. However, Clyburn said it was unclear how that would be maintained.
In an HHS podcast with Caputo that came out on July 31, Slaoui said he “has never been over the money” and the claims “insult to the depths of my personal fibers.”
“I am very surprised and then extremely disappointed” that “I am being attacked on a personal basis in a way that sincerely detracts from my energy,” he said.
Slaoui did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his letter to Azar, Clyburn suggests that the criteria used in selecting trial agencies were not clear, as well as who specifically has the choice for which to develop.
Experts including a team from National Institutes of Health that are specifically trained to help develop vaccines were not included in the selection process, Clyburn said.
The senior HHS official told NBC News that vaccination candidates have been selected based on their ability to meet safety, timeline and large-scale production and distribution requirements. The board of directors of Warp Speed is making the final decisions to choose, the official said.
From May to June, the list of vaccine candidates was limited from 14 to eight, even though the NIH team conducted a review of 50 vaccine candidates, Clyburn noted.
“Successful development of a vaccine requires scientific rigor and an open and transparent process free from financial and political conflicts of interest,” Clyburn said in the letter.
Clyburn – who is also a close adviser to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden – sent a separate letter to Drs. David Harris, president of Advanced Decision Vectors LLC, a company based in Alexandria, Va. which employs independent advisors who advise Operation Warp Speed.
In the letters, Clyburn cites other advisers with ties to the pharmaceutical sector who have not disclosed any possible conflicts of interest because the administration “structured its contracts to avoid the ethical rules and requirements.” They include William Erhardt and Rachel Harrigan, both former executives of Pfizer.
Earlier in the year, watchdog groups, including Public Citizen, called on the Office of Government Ethics to classify the ‘vaccinator,’ as Slaoui’s position, as a government job requiring such disclosure.
