This issue of the Case Corner focuses on a case written by Kevin Schulman, Stanford University.
Case: Operation Warp Speed and the COVID-19 Vaccine (Stanford GSB Case SM-345. Date: 04/28/21. 23 pages)
Authors: Kevin Schulman and Abishek Thiagaraj, Stanford University
Background: In response to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Government launched Operation Warp Speed (OWS) to accelerate development of a vaccine directed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. From the start, OWS was conceived of as a public-private partnership (PPP), bringing together the public and private sector into one collaborative effort. One of the major beneficiaries of OWS was the pharmaceutical firm Moderna, a company which had never produced an FDA approved product in its decade-long history. OWS was able to leverage research from the NIH to define the spike protein as a vaccine target. OWS was a tremendous success in that vaccines were developed and tested in record time. At the same time, there were questions of conflict of interest in selecting partners for the program, and failures of manufacturing and distribution that suggest the limit to accountability of OWS as a PPP mechanism. Finally, the focus of OWS on the US rather than the global market was a significant oversight was the pandemic has evolved.
The case focused on five questions:
- Did COVID-19 vaccine development require a PPP? What benefits did this structure provide? What risks did it entail?
- Transparency and a means to address conflicts of interests were major issues in the implementation of OWS. Are these elements required for a PPP? What are the risks of a PPP with and without these elements?
- OWS had a U.S. focus. What were the implications of this focus on the U.S., on the E.U., and on the developing world in terms of the global response to the pandemic? Did the U.S. population benefit from this approach?
- In considering a portfolio of vaccine technologies, did the PPP crowd in or crowd out other possible solutions for vaccine development?
- Should we measure success of this PPP by the time required for vaccine development, or the time required to achieve herd immunity through vaccine deployment? If the latter was the measure of success, was OWS successful? If we had the latter measure, would you have allocated more resources to building the U.S. public health infrastructure instead of OWS?
(Dr. John Muthee), COO (Dr. Justus Kilonzi) and Professor Medicine at Stanford (Dr. Kevin Schulman)
Download the case here: SM345 Operation Warp Speed