President Trump all but promised a Covid-19 vaccine before the end of 2020 in a speech Thursday night closing the Republican National Convention, laying down a marker that leaves little room for the uncertainties of medicine and science.
“We are delivering lifesaving therapies, and will produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner!” Trump said from the south lawn of the White House. “We will defeat the virus, end the pandemic, and emerge stronger than ever before.”
Later, referencing but not citing by name the vaccines under development by AstraZeneca (ticker: AZN), Moderna (MRNA), and a collaboration between Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX), he said again: “We will have a safe and effective vaccine this year, and together we will crush the virus.”
The campaign address slightly accelerates the timeline laid out by Operation Warp Speed, the administration’s effort to support rapid development of a Covid-19 vaccine, which says it aims to have initial vaccine doses available by January of 2021. But given the timelines put forward by Pfizer and BioNTech in particular, investors widely expect a Covid-19 vaccine authorization to be possible by the end of the year, depending on the outcome of the ongoing trials.
But Trump’s framing of a vaccine this year as a certainty skips over the essential question of whether the vaccines will be safe and effective.
Early data from all three of the most-advanced Covid-19 vaccines programs has been promising. But data for those programs is available only for a relatively small number of people over a very brief time frame. Whether the vaccines will work, and whether they will work well enough for the Food and Drug Administration to authorize them for use on an emergency basis, depends entirely on the outcome of the 30,000-person trials now under way for each of the vaccines.
And an approved vaccine won’t necessarily “defeat the virus” or “end the pandemic.” The vaccine will likely only be available initially for limited groups of highly vulnerable people. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would need to suggest widespread use of the vaccine to trigger population-wide vaccination. And the vaccine would need to overcome reluctance from anti-vaxxers, and from others concerned about the limited safety data available on the novel vaccines.
What’s more, Trump’s suggestion that a vaccine could be available “even sooner” than the end of the year echoes a tweet he issued this past weekend, in which he accused the FDA of delaying progress on vaccine testing because “they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd.” Both suggest that the president hopes for vaccine authorization before the election.
Former FDA officials told Barron’s in July that the public might not trust a vaccine if its authorization looks politically motivated.
The focus on vaccine authorization puts the FDA in an enormously challenging position, as it seeks to maintain public trust and avoid the appearance of being influenced by political considerations. That effort took a blow early this week after the agency’s commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, overstated the known effectiveness of a Covid-19 treatment during a White House press conference, later retracting the comments.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com
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August 28, 2020 at 07:52AM
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President Trump Promised a Vaccine Before the End of the Year. What You Need to Know. - Barron's
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