Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier called for a careful approach to developing coronavirus vaccines, emphasizing that people cannot rush science.
“I know there are a lot of public voices talking about when vaccines will be ready, but the fact of the matter is you can’t rush science,” the Merck CEO said during an interview on CNBC’s “Fast Money: Halftime Report.”
Frazier’s statements come one day after his company and other leading vaccine developers, from both the US and UK, presented a pledge to assure the public that safety is their top priority as they look forward to getting regulatory approval.
Meanwhile, AstraZeneca, another signatory of the letter, explained that it was postponing late-stage vaccine trial on hold due to safety issues, with one participant in the UK manifesting a possible serious adverse reaction. AstraZeneca regarded it a “routine action” that “has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials.”
The coronavirus vaccine development is being monitored thoroughly as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread across the world. It already led to at least 27.6 million infections worldwide and 899,318 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The US has reported at least 190,000 deaths associated with Covid-19. There are also worries about the influence of politics over the vaccine approval process.
Operation Warp Speed
President Donald Trump has set up the program Operation Warp Speed, a program which aims to accelerate coronavirus vaccine development in the US. It aims to provide at least 300 million doses by January 2021.
Moreover, Trump is optimistic that a vaccine will be available before November 3, the day of the presidential election.
Earlier this summer, Frazier noted that increasing expectations that a Covid-19 vaccine could be available by the end of 2020 was doing “grave disservice to the public.” On Wednesday, he stressed the need for clinical trials to be held and referred to the letter published by fellow drugmakers.
“We have to be very careful and deliberate. ... We’re pledging, as the sponsors, as the developers, that we’re actually going to be that careful. We’re going to be that deliberate coming forward with these medicines because we know we’re going into healthy people and when you’re putting these vaccines into healthy people, you have to do everything possible to ensure that these vaccines are both safe and effective,” Frazier said.
Board diversity
In his interview, Frazier shared that Merck strengthened its board diversity was to widen the pool of qualified candidates. The company also worked on eliminating systemic and implicit barriers to “getting the best talent.”
He stressed the role of people’s own social networks in recruiting for senior management roles and board positions. “As long as we don’t have African Americans and Latinos represented at the highest echelons of corporate America, both in management and also in the boardroom, it’s unlikely that African Americans and Latinos who are coming through the system will be able to take advantage of those social networks,” he said.
“I know that we want to find a pool of qualified people, but often we ask the kinds of questions like, ‘does anybody know this candidate?’ and, ‘do you think this candidate would be a good fit?’ So those kind of relationship issues are critical. They become the networking issues that either include people or unintentionally exclude people,” he noted.
“But I have to say, this time feels different in that the conversation is happening in every boardroom and it’s happening around kitchen tables all in America around a really difficult issue, around the systemic effects of racism,” he said.
