Why it matters: The cross-agency effort the Trump and Biden administrations ran to speed up production and distribution of COVID therapeutics is widely viewed as one of the few legitimate successes in the federal pandemic response.
What they’re saying: Kessler’s most valuable contributions came in the way he interacted and brokered deals with drugmakers and kept the flow of countermeasures available to the public, said former NIAID director Anthony Fauci.
- “Most of what he does is behind the scenes, but it’s very valuable,” Fauci said of the former FDA administrator, who helped develop and approve HIV/AIDS drugs in the 1990s.
- Fauci himself retired at the end of last year and has not been replaced. Nor has former NIH Director Francis Collins, who left at the end of 2021 but quickly returned as an acting science adviser to Biden.
The big picture: The Trump administration launched Operation Warp Speed just months into the pandemic. The FDA authorized the first COVID vaccine in December of the same year, shaving years off of the typical vaccine development and approval process.
Between the lines: Although funding for COVID treatments and vaccines initially received bipartisan support, Republicans blocked the White House’s request for billions in additional pandemic response funding last year. The existing therapies are transitioning to the private market.
- That means the federal government is no longer coordinating or taking on financial risks surrounding new treatments and vaccines, which some experts have said is a mistake. Many have called for investment in areas like variant-resistant vaccines, new antivirals and vaccines administered via the nose.