The following is a transcript of an interview with former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb that aired on February 14, 2021 on ‘Face the Nation’.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We now turn to former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb. He sits on the board of Pfizer as well as Illumina, and he joins us from Westport, Connecticut. Good morning to you.
DOCTOR SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I know you agree with the – the Rite Aid CEO there that the private sector should play a more direct role in more of this process. Do you see the Biden administration finally getting there?
DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, I think they do it now, the Biden administration. I think they follow an overall approach to expressing it and creating more websites. You know, the one recommendation I would make is that I would not do it – I would not spend so much federal resources on the development of these massive vaccination sites. I think people who can go online, register, drive to Dodger Stadium, wait in line, take half a day off from work to get vaccinated, these are people who have been through Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid , can be serviced. I take federal resources and state resources and create more custom solutions that can be used in some of the hard to reach environments, some of the underserved communities, or bring your mobile pickups into the communities, try to work through community groups, local providers, church groups, community health centers to try to get vaccinated populations more difficult to reach. This is a very difficult endeavor. It’s expensive. It’s a deliberate attempt. This is a practical endeavor. I’ll turn the federal resources towards that kind of mission and let Walmart work off the easy question and Rite Aid.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The Biden government has bought another 200 million doses. It eventually gives a stock of about 600 as soon as it comes off the production line. You heard me talk to the CDC director and I asked her when the production should change to the new treatments. She said it’s happening now. What can you tell us about where we stand when we are ready to protect against the new variants?
DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, look, I think we have enough time to get it ready for fall and have vaccines that can cover these new varieties. The development work is currently continuing. So all the companies are developing new vaccines, including Pfizer, the company where I’m on the board. The question is when do you start switching to your manufacturing? And I think you’ll probably have to take it sometime in July, August. And you can not switch all your manufacturing products. You can move part of your production to the new vaccines, because remember that this will not be done in full by clinical trials. So you do not want to throw all your eggs in that basket, but you do want to create some stock so that you will have autumn on hand if you need the vaccines. So I think this is about the point where you are going to make the decision. The time to start the manufacturing process and to finish vaccinating the product is about two months. So if you start manufacturing in July, you will get the vaccine off the line in time for the fall.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You have heard that the British Prime Minister stands by his decision to continue vaccinating his people with the AstraZeneca vaccine, although it appears to be less effective in early trials against the South African variant. not. The WHO also agrees. Is this a mistake?
DR SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, I think if we’re going to do that, we need a plan. I understand why they want to do this. They manufactured a lot of this vaccine. It’s cheap. It is accessible. It can be placed in low- and middle-income countries due to the handling requirements. It does not require complicated storage of cold rooms. But if you put a vaccine in the markets that we do not know B.1.351, the South African variant, is very good, if it is at all. You run the risk of opting for that variant in those markets. You therefore need a plan B on which vaccine you are going to put in those regions if B.1.351 is common in those regions after you have been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine. And the problem is that you can exclude the one vaccine that is the most likely candidate in those markets, namely the J&J vaccine because it has very similar storage requirements. You want to use the vaccine. But in reality, the AstraZeneca vaccine is very immunogenic against the vaccine vector. So what they use to deliver the COVID gene sequence is a chimpanzee adenovirus. And it turns out that the adenovirus they use is very immunogenic. It creates antibodies that can attack other adenoviruses, including maybe, and we do not know for sure, but maybe the J&J vaccine. You can therefore eliminate the opportunity to use the vaccine in these markets, which means you need a different plan B, which could be the mRNA vaccines, such as the vaccine that Pfizer manufactures, the company where I am on board . But the vaccines are harder to handle in those markets because they require more complicated storage of cold rooms. So we have to work it out now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s a pretty big warning you’re making right now. Ek- ek–
DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, I think they, I think they should have a plan for it, yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I also want to ask you about these comments. They were pretty sharp, I think, from the Biden government’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. He said yesterday that Biden’s government was deeply concerned about the World Health Organization’s investigation into Chinese interference. He demanded that data be handed over. That is also exactly what the Trump administration has demanded. What is it that China still has here that we need to know?
DR. GOTTLIEB: Lots of data. Well, first, they did antibody testing on the people who worked in the Wuhan laboratory. They did not make it available. So you want to know if they have antibodies against the coronavirus. This would be an indication that they may have become infected. These antibodies will decrease over time. But you want to at least look at that data. We want to see the sequence of data on examples of people being hospitalized in October and November with virus syndromes that look like COVID to see if this infection has spread in the past and trying to get closer to the origin of the initial outbreak. The data is definitely available, the Chinese have it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
DR. GOTTLIEB: There is a lot of data that has not been made available.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Dr. Gottlieb, as always, thank you very much for your time. We’re back in a moment.