''Big, ginormous assumption'' on manufacturing success As a result, the government didn't know how many doses were really coming, and Pfizer's estimates kept dropping, according to several people familiar with the matter.Įvery delay in vaccine production meant that the U.S. But the company's initial contract, worth nearly $2 billion, contained limited reporting requirements to the federal government when there was a delay. Operation Warp Speed was depending on Pfizer to deliver more than two-thirds of the vaccines expected in late 2020. That week, the CDC counted more than 10,000 deaths for the first time since COVID-19 hit.
#Pfizer warp speed full
"There was not only full transparency, there was show and tell," Pfizer spokesperson Sharon Castillo told NPR. "It's just that the truth was being concealed from us." "I can assure you that Alex Azar always conveyed the truth as he knew it," said Mango, who stepped down in January, of Azar's Today comments. Still, Azar had no idea what he was saying was wrong, Paul Mango, Azar's deputy chief of staff, told NPR. Instead of saying it would make 100 million doses for the world by the end of the year, the company disclosed that it would make 50 million. 27 until mid-January, according to an NPR analysis of allocation data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and interviews with several people familiar with the matter.Ī day earlier, Pfizer changed a line that had been appearing at the bottom of many of its news releases since the summer. It wouldn't finish delivering the doses projected to be due in its contract on Nov. "Pfizer will be producing and delivering to us approximately 20 million doses of vaccine each month starting at the end of this month, in November," Azar told Guthrie.īut Pfizer was more than a month behind that schedule. 10, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was on the Today show talking to Savannah Guthrie about the "fruits of Operation Warp Speed and America's biopharmaceutical industry." Officials with Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's multibillion-dollar push to make a COVID-19 vaccine available in record time, didn't know there was a problem.Įarly on the morning of Nov. It was 17 days before Pfizer's first delivery deadline under its federal COVID-19 vaccine contract, and the company wasn't going to meet it, according to federal records and several people familiar with the matter. Then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar (left) and President Donald Trump listen as Moncef Slaoui of Operation Warp Speed speaks about the crash program to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in the White House Rose Garden in May 2020.
0 kommentar(er)
