Dr. Fauci warns that rushing out the first coronavirus vaccine before it's proven safe and effective in large trials could jeopardize testing all the others
Dr. Anthony Fauci, America's leading infectious disease expert, is warning that releasing a coronavirus vaccine before it's been proven safe and effective in large trials could have a detrimental effect on testing other COVID-19 vaccines.
Scientists and health experts have expressed concern that President Donald Trump will apply pressure on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to deliver a vaccine before November to boost his chances of re-election.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, declined to comment on the president, but said there are risks in rushing out a vaccine despite the urgent need.
Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that rushing out a coronavirus vaccine before it's thoroughly tested and proven effective could result in problems for trials of other COVID vaccines later
'The one thing that you would not want to see with a vaccine is getting an EUA (emergency use authorization) before you have a signal of efficacy,' Fauci told Reuters in a phone interview.
'One of the potential dangers if you prematurely let a vaccine out is that it would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the other vaccines to enroll people in their trial,' Fauci said.
Large-scale clinical trials of the leading vaccine candidates from Moderna Inc, Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca Plc, which aim to enroll tens of thousands of volunteers, were launched in recent weeks. Johnson & Johnson last week said it hopes to include 60,000 subjects in its Phase III vaccine trial.
Trump stoked concerns of politicizing the regulatory approval process with an announcement on Sunday of an emergency use authorization for plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients to treat current patients before its benefits have been assessed in randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials.
President Trump said Sunday the use of blood plasma from recovered COVID patients has received an emergency authorization for coronavirus treatment. His pictured with FDA head Stephen Hahn and Health and Human Service secretary Alex Azar Sunday
Trump's blood plasma announcement raised eyebrows, as did a tweet suggesting a 'deep state' plot at the FDA was purposely holding up progress on coronavirus drugs and vaccines
Trump had tweeted on Saturday that 'deep state' elements at the FDA were purposely delaying progress on drugs and vaccines in order to hurt his reelection bid.
'The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics,' Trump weeted.
'Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!'
Trump tagged FDA head Stephen Hahn in the tweet and came just two days after Hahn had said in an interview that he could not speculate on when the FDA might approve a coronavirus vaccine, but that the process was moving quickly.
'That’s not because anyone has been cutting corners. It’s because it’s taken a concerted effort and we haven’t done things in sequence, we’ve done things in parallel,' Hahn told Gray DC.
Despite Trump saying that he wanted the vaccine to be ready by early November, Hahn said that: 'The only facts FDA will look at with respect to a vaccine when the data come to us is those data and science and the medicine.'
He added that: 'I’ve had absolutely no pressure from anyone.'
Safe and effective vaccines are seen as essential to ending the pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 800,000 people worldwide, over 177,000 of them in the United States.
But vaccine experts worry that the White House may apply pressure on the FDA to push out a vaccine via an EUA before it has been fully tested - a pathway that has never been used to approve a vaccine intended for widespread use.
'I would be very worried about using an EUA mechanism for something like a vaccine. It's very different from plasma therapy,' said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease expert and vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine.
Fauci said the FDA's guidance on vaccines - both for full approval and for an EUA - explicitly requires a demonstration that it is both safe and effective.
An EUA is typically used for products to 'diagnose, prevent and treat serious or life-threatening diseases where the known benefits outweigh the potential risks of the product,' Fauci said.
An EUA might be appropriate once studies have shown safety and effectiveness, but before the FDA has completed its formal review of the company's marketing application, he said.
'To me, it's absolutely paramount that you definitively show that a vaccine is safe and effective, both,' Fauci said. 'We would hope that nothing interferes with the full demonstration that a vaccine is safe and effective.'