Zients Fronts Biden Administration’s Restructured Operation Warp Speed

Created by the prior administration to accelerate development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics, Operation Warp Speed (OWS) is an initiative in search of a new name, but it already has a new lineup of prominent individuals chosen by the Biden administration, including a new front man, Jeffrey Zients.

Zients, who was most recently the CEO of investment firm Cranemere, has replaced immunologist Deborah Birx in the role of coronavirus response coordinator. But the nature of the job has changed. Zients is leading the administration’s coronavirus media briefings but he also has a greatly expanded management brief.

Specifically, he has been tasked with overseeing the vaccine supply chain and coordinating the federal response. He has no medical background but brings high level managerial experience, as an Obama administration economic advisor, who also served in both the Office of Management and Budget and the National Economic Council.

The restructured OWS program features other prominent individuals drawn from the regulatory, public health and business communities, including:

• Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, who has replaced Moncef Slaoui as chief science officer. Kessler led the FDA from 1990 to 1997 where he helped to expedite the drug approval process, including for drugs developed to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
• U.S. Army General Gustave Perna has stayed on as chief operating officer. Perna previously served with the U.S. Army Material Command and is a former deputy chief of staff for logistics.
• Bechara Choucair, former chief health officer of Kaiser Permanente, has taken on the new role of White House vaccinations coordinator. Before joining Kaiser in December 2016, Choucair was a senior vice president with Trinity Health and served as Chicago’s public health commissioner from 2009 until 2014.
• Acting HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra replaced former HHS Secretary Alex Azar. Becerra is the current attorney general of California. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has scheduled a confirmation hearing for Becerra on Feb. 23.
• Andy Slavitt, former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from March 2015 to January 2017, is serving as a senior advisor. Slavitt is perhaps best known for helping to fix the flawed initial rollout of healthcare.gov during his tenure as CEO of OptumInsight, a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary.
• In addition, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the nation’s top infectious disease expert, will remain a key player in the administration’s COVID-19 response team while serving in an expanded capacity as chief medical advisor (DID, Dec. 7, 2020).

In a coronavirus briefing yesterday, Zients said Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine could be just weeks away from receiving an FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) but said the initial rollout is likely to be small.

“Across the last few weeks, we’ve learned that there is not a big inventory of J&J. There’s a few million doses that we’ll start with,” he said. “The … contract commits J&J to deliver 100 million doses by the end of June. That is more back end loaded. We’re working with the company to do everything we can, assuming they’re [authorized] by the FDA, to bring forward as many of those doses as possible into the earlier months.”

J&J has said that it still intends to make good on its 100 million dose commitment to the U.S. in the first half of 2021. ― Jason Scott