President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team will meet with officials representing the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed coronavirus vaccine program on Thursday, according to the initiative’s chief adviser Moncef Slaoui.
“We have a meeting planned on Thursday. We look forward to, you know, sharing all the information and working together,” Slaoui said on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.
“Our objective has always been outside of politics and making sure we make available these vaccines for the U.S. people, and that’s what we’re doing,” Slaoui added.
The meeting will come a week after Biden’s transition team met with the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, who is a member of the White House coronavirus task force. Biden has tapped Fauci as his chief medical adviser and will formally introduce other members of his health team later Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Biden transition team did not immediately return a request for more information on the planned meeting with Operation Warp Speed representatives.
The scheduled meeting is the latest indication of the transition process moving forward expeditiously despite President Trump’s refusal to concede the election and determination to challenge the results.
Operation Warp Speed is the current administration’s public-private program aimed at accelerating the development of coronavirus vaccines. Biden and his team have emphasized the need to gain access to information about the Trump administration’s plans to distribute vaccines during the transition process so they can help prepare for a change in administration.
The U.S. is expected to begin distributing coronavirus vaccines to vulnerable populations in short order, after vaccines developed Pfizer and Moderna were shown to be about 95 percent effective in phase three clinical trials.
A Food and Drug Administration review released Tuesday confirmed that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is both safe and effective, paving the way for the vaccine to receive emergency use authorization.