The Biden Administration is invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to increase manufacturing of existing vaccines, a move that could help expand limited supplies and get more vaccinations sites up and running.
But the idea that any company, even another pharmaceutical company, can simply start producing the vaccines is easier than it sounds, according to some experts.
“One of the delusions I think people have is the idea that the Defense Production Act … you can’t do that with vaccines,” said Barry Bloom, a leading infectious disease expert at Harvard University.
“This is a really complex business,” Bloom added, in a recent interview.
NYU Langone Health vaccine expert Dr. Arthur Caplan said vaccines are “a pain in the neck” because unlike other pharmaceutical products, they relies on incubating biological ingredients.
“Sometimes what you’re trying to grow in an incubator doesn’t grow well, and you don’t know why. Historically, vaccine rollouts … have had some delay because the factory gets in trouble,” Caplan said.
Baylor College of Medicine’s Dr. Peter Hotez, another top vaccine expert, said the current demand is pushing the limits of manufacturing a brand new technology, messenger RNA, at scale.
“We knew the mRNA vaccines were not going to be the workhorse of this epidemic. It’s a new technology, it doesn’t have that capacity for scale like other technologies do,” Hotez said.
But some experts point to the ability to tweak mRNA vaccines more quickly, which is increasingly important as variants spread throughout the country, is a key benefit.
The White House COVID-19 Response Team’s latest briefing saw officials focus on leveraging the DPA to provide critical components instead of actual vaccine production.
National supply chain coordinator Tim Manning said Friday the DPA can, through a priority rating, route supplies to a company.
“That means that…a vaccine manufacturer gets first access to the product they need before anyone else,” Manning said.
Pivot to supplies
The team is starting with ensuring supplies and components are manufactured for Pfizer (PFE) to help ramp up production. That includes filling pumps and filtration systems.
The company had previously touted its refusal to accept Operation Warp Speed funding to develop its vaccines, but it did use help from the Trump administration for distribution and supplies.
The DPA was used “in the last days of the Trump administration” to prioritize components for the company’s vaccine production, White House officials said Friday.
This, according to Response Team coordinator Andy Slavitt, is why the company was able to recently announce a ramp up in production.
Pfizer declined multiple requests to comment on the details of the aid from the federal government.
Caplan said that was one shortfall of the Trump administration, which did not push…
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