T<\/span><\/span>hough HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Defense Secretary Mark Esper are at the top, the two key leaders are Slaoui, the formal civilian leader of the project, and Gen. Gustave Perna, the military lead who is the chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed.<\/p>\nUnder Slaoui are two major pillars, \u201cVaccine\u201d and \u201cTherapeutics.\u201d Under Perna are three pillars, for \u201cPlans, Ops and Analysis,\u201d \u201cSecurity and Assurance,\u201d and \u201cSupply, Production and [Distribution].\u201d<\/p>\n
But the complexity of the organization makes it difficult as an outsider to discern who is reporting directly to who, experts in business management who reviewed the chart told STAT.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s confusing for sure,\u201d said Robert Huckman, the chair of Harvard Business School\u2019s health care initiative, who studies health care management and organization. Huckman added that the chart was more complex than most he\u2019s seen. \u201cIt is more complex, but it\u2019s a more complex endeavor, too \u2026 it may be that it simply reflects the complexity of what Operation Warp Speed is trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can only imagine the headache that comes with trying to coordinate these different production processes,\u201d said Raffaella Sadun, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School who studies CEO behavior.<\/p>\n
Slaoui\u2019s tenure thus far at Warp Speed has been marked by outside concerns over his personal financial stake in some of the companies he is now overseeing. Slaoui, who holds roughly $10 million in GSK stock, is not bound by federal ethics rules because he is employed by an outside contractor, not the federal government. Slaoui has agreed to donate any increase in the value of that stock, although that agreement hasn\u2019t placated critics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first person to be fired should be Dr. Slaoui,\u201d Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said at a hearing last week. \u201cThe American people deserve to know that Covid-19 vaccine decisions are based on science, and not on personal greed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
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Operation Warp Speed promised to do the impossible. How far has it come?<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n But Slaoui knows firsthand, perhaps better than anyone else, what it takes to dramatically speed up the search for a vaccine. He played a pivotal role in GSK\u2019s sprint to develop an Ebola vaccine in 2015. The effort ultimately failed, but he is so well-regarded at GSK that the company named its vaccine research center after him in 2016.<\/p>\n
Perna, meanwhile, is a four-star Army general who previously managed virtually all of the Army\u2019s logistics. He was even inducted into the Army\u2019s own logistics hall of fame. He most recently served as head of Army Materiel Command, a sprawling job that handles virtually all of the Army\u2019s equipment. The organization\u2019s slogan is: \u201cIf a Soldier shoots it, drives it, flies it, wears it, communicates with it, or eats it \u2014 AMC provides it.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his tenure, Perna constantly pushed the Army to move faster, and to be more ready to go to war at a moment\u2019s notice.<\/p>\n
Below Perna and Slaoui are a team of military and civilian experts like Ostrowski, a former special forces soldier who handles the supply and distribution of an eventual vaccine, and Matt Hepburn, the initiative\u2019s go-to vaccine coordinator. Hepburn cut his teeth working on high-tech military projects, including an initiative that developed sensors that could be implanted into soldiers to detect certain illnesses before the men and women ever showed symptoms. Hepburn also has a reputation for driving even the most accomplished scientists to work harder than they\u2019ve ever worked before.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Matt is still the Matt I know, he will be on these people with a foot on their neck, making them go go go,\u201d said Geoffrey Ling, Hepburn\u2019s former boss at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Operation Warp Speed doesn\u2019t have the transparency it needs<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n There are government outsiders deeply involved in the project, too. Larry Corey, one of the country\u2019s leading AIDS researchers, describes himself as an \u201cex-officio\u201d member of Warp Speed. Corey runs the Covid-19 prevention network, an assortment of existing HIV trial networks that now are running at least three of the Phase 3 Covid-19 clinical trials. While he\u2019s not formally on the organizational chart, he takes part in thrice-weekly calls with Warp Speed. Corey, who is based in Seattle, is in constant cross-country coordination with one of the NIH\u2019s top vaccine researchers, John Mascola, a formal member of the organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are sacrificing our time and energy on Operation Warp Speed. We have taken the pivot from everything else that we have done in our lives,\u201d Corey said, regarding him and Mascola. Corey described waking up at 5 a.m. each day to get on calls with Warp Speed leaders at 5:30 a.m., and then enduring a deluge of conference calls until 6 p.m. When the day\u2019s work is done, he turns to planning for the following day, which keeps him working until 11 p.m. He\u2019s in bed by midnight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think his day is any different than my day,\u201d Corey said of Mascola. Both, he was sure, are sleep-deprived.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Joe Biden\u2019s campaign-trail challenge: Casting doubt on a Trump vaccine without fueling broader vaccine skepticism<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n O<\/span><\/span>peration Warp Speed is much more than a splashy name for an initiative focused on doling out purchase orders. The benefits for companies who land a Warp Speed contract go far beyond just money, according to one of the companies with a contract.<\/p>\nSiO2 Materials Science, an Auburn, Ala.-based company that is making vials for the effort, used its status as an Operation Warp Speed grantee to force a vendor to cut production time from 75 days to just seven. It also leveraged its contract with Warp Speed to get its power turned on in the midst of a massive outage in just minutes \u2014 others had to wait days, according Lawrence Ganti, the company\u2019s chief business officer. Operation Warp Speed also covered the costs of installing 32 new security cameras around the company\u2019s facility after an assessment found the company\u2019s physical security was lacking.<\/p>\n
SiO2 received $143 million from Operation Warp Speed, a fraction of what larger companies have received, but the company still is required to provide monthly status reports to the government. The reports typically run up to 60 pages and are coupled with a four-hour meeting attended by multiple Warp Speed officials, according to Ganti. That\u2019s in addition to biweekly \u201crisk reports\u201d and weekly site visits from the Army Corps of Engineers.<\/p>\n
A second company funded by Warp Speed confirmed similar reporting requirements.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody has \u2014 or at least I had a stereotype of how the government operated. Nine-to-five, slow, kind of what you\u2019d expect at the DMV \u2026 this is not that in any way,\u201d said Ganti. \u201cThey seem to be working 24\/7.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
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If you value our coronavirus coverage, please consider making a one-time contribution to support our journalism.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n T<\/span><\/span>he organizational chart also underscores which agencies are not as closely involved in the leadership of the effort: namely, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which took a leading role in coordinating vaccine distribution for other past pandemics, like the H1N1 pandemic of 2009. There are at least three staffers from each of the administration\u2019s other major health agencies, like the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority or the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\nMango, the HHS deputy chief of staff, said the CDC has a more central role than the personnel chart implies. He personally interacts with Messonier multiple times a week, and there are frequent meetings between the DOD and CDC with 15-20 of her deputies, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat General Perna says at the start of every meeting, and he means it, is we are here for one reason, to support the CDC,\u201d Mango said. \u201cAnyone who is watching what is going on a daily basis would say the CDC is leading and the DOD is enabling and supporting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman struck a similar tone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Department of Defense has been clear in its role in Operation Warp Speed: We are providing the bandwidth of logistical expertise, including program management and contracting proficiency to this all-of-America effort,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cThe development and delivery of over 300 million vaccine doses harnesses public-private partnerships, academia, and industry \u2013 no one entity can do this alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pentagon also declined to comment on the chart obtained by STAT, saying they do not comment on leaked documents.<\/p>\n
The Food and Drug Administration is also largely absent from the organizational chart, though that is by design. Most FDA officials are barred from participating formally in Operation Warp Speed over concerns that their involvement would conflict with their mission to impartially review eventual vaccine applications. The one major exception is Janet Woodcock, who took a temporary leave as head of FDA\u2019s drug center to lead the initiative\u2019s efforts on therapeutics.<\/p>\n
BARDA plays perhaps the most head-scratching role in Operation Warp Speed. The organization\u2019s acting director, Gary Disbrow, a camera-shy bureaucrat who was catapulted into the job after the ouster of his boss, Rick Bright<\/a>, is listed as co-leading the vaccine effort alongside Hepburn, and a number of other BARDA leaders are included in the chart.<\/p>\nBut three sources told STAT that Disbrow, and BARDA more generally, are playing a marginal role in Warp Speed. \u201cBARDA has been largely sidelined in all of this,\u201d one pharmaceutical industry source told STAT.<\/p>\n
Ganti of SiO2, however, told STAT that the company deals primarily with BARDA for all of its Warp Speed-related questions. Mango also told STAT BARDA officials meet with Warp Speed officials daily \u201cto make sure contracts are moving along.\u201d<\/p>\n
BARDA also appears to be fronting a large chunk of the funding for the Warp Speed initiative, alongside the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense.<\/p>\n
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