The following is a transcript of an interview with former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb aired on “Face the Nation” on February 14, 2021.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We now turn to former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb. He is on the board of Pfizer and Illumina, and he comes to us from Westport, Connecticut. Good morning.
DOCTOR SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I know you agree with the – the CEO of Rite Aid there that the private sector should play a more direct role in more of this process. Do you see Biden’s administration getting there eventually?
DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, I think they are doing it now, the Biden administration. I think they are taking an all-of-the-above approach in terms of trying to express this and create more access sites. You know, the only recommendation I would make is that I wouldn’t spend that much federal resources developing 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, that’s people who can be served by Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid. I would use the federal resources and the state resources and create more tailor-made solutions that can be used in some of the hard-to-reach environments, some of the disadvantaged communities or you can move mobile vans to those communities, try to work through community groups, local suppliers, church groups, community health centers to try to vaccinate harder-to-reach populations. That is a very difficult attempt. It is expensive. It is a tailor-made effort. It’s a practical effort. I would put the federal resources into that kind of mission and let Walmart work on the Easy Question and Rite Aid.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The Biden government has bought 200 million additional doses. That ultimately gives them a supply of about 600 once it gets off the production line. You heard me talking to the CDC director and I asked her when to shift production to those treatments of new variants. She said that is happening now. What can you tell us about where we are in terms of our willingness to protect ourselves from those new variants?
DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, look, I think we have plenty of time to get this right before fall and have vaccine boosters that could cover these new variants. Development work is currently underway. So all companies are developing new variant vaccines, including Pfizer, which is the company I’m in. The question is, when do you start switching production? And I think you should probably make that decision by July, August at the latest. And you may not be shifting all of your manufacturing. You may be shifting some of your production to those new variant vaccines because don’t forget that they won’t be fully through clinical trials yet. So you don’t want to throw all of your eggs in that basket, but you do want to create some supply to have on hand for the fall when you need those vaccines. So I think that’s about where you’re going to make that decision. The time to start the manufacturing process and actually get the vaccine off the production line is about two months. So if you start manufacturing in July, you will start getting the vaccine off the line in time for fall.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You heard that the British Prime Minister was sticking to his decision to continue to vaccinate his population with the AstraZeneca vaccine, even though it has not been shown to be as effective in early trials against the South African variant. WHO also sticks to it. Is that a mistake?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, I think if we’re going to do that, we’ll need a plan B. I understand why they want to do this. They made a lot of this vaccine. It’s cheap. It is accessible. Due to the handling requirements, it could be placed in low and middle income countries. It doesn’t require complicated cold chain storage. But if you put a vaccine on those markets that we know don’t cover B.1.351, the South African variety, or not at all. You run the risk that you could choose that variant in those markets. And so you need a Plan B on which vaccine to use in those regions if B.1.351 is actually in those regions after you have been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine. And the problem is, you may be ruling out the only vaccine that is the most likely candidate in those markets, which is the J&J vaccine, because it has very similar storage requirements. You would like to use that vaccine. In fact, 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 adenovirus they use is very immunogenic. It creates antibodies that can attack other adenoviruses, including maybe, and we’re not sure, but maybe the J&J vaccine. So you could rule out the possibility of using that vaccine in these markets, which means you need a different plan B, that could be the mRNA vaccines, like the vaccine that Pfizer manufactures, the company I’m on the board of sitting. But those vaccines are more difficult to handle in those markets because they require more complex cold chain storage. So we have to figure this out now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s a pretty big warning you are giving now. Me me-
DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, I think they … I think they should have a plan for that, yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I also want to ask you about these comments. They were pretty sharp, I thought, from the … of the government’s national security adviser Biden Jake Sullivan. He said yesterday that the Biden government is deeply concerned about the World Health Organization investigation and China’s interference in it. He demanded the handing over of data. That’s exactly what the Trump administration demanded. What is it that China has left here that we should know?
DR. GOTTLIEB: Lots of data. First, they have antibodies tested on the people who worked in that Wuhan lab. They have not made that available. So you would want to know if they have antibodies to the coronavirus. That would be an indication that they might have become infected. Now those antibodies will decrease over time. But at least you want to look at that data. We want to see sequence data from preserved samples of people hospitalized in October and November with viral syndromes resembling COVID, to see if this infection was spreading earlier, and to get closer to the source of the initial outbreak. That data is certainly available, the Chinese have that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
DR. GOTTLIEB: So there is a lot of data that has not been made available.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Dr. Gottlieb, as always, thank you for your time. We will be right back.