President Donald Trump has selected Moncef Slaoui, a former chairman of vaccines at pharmaceutical conglomerate GlaxoSmithKline, to lead the government’s efforts to speed the creation of a coronavirus vaccine.
Slaoui will act as chief adviser on Operation Warp Speed, the name for the vaccine effort, while Gen. Gustave F. Perna, the head of the Army Materiel Command, will serve as chief operating officer. Bloomberg News, which first reported the appointments, notes that Slaoui will be working as a volunteer. The White House has yet to make a formal announcement about the appointments, which were confirmed to The New York Times by a senior administration official.
Slaoui retired from GlaxoSmithKline in 2017 after close to 30 years at the company, where he was credited with supervising the development of several vaccines, including Cervarix, which protects against a viral infection connected to cervical cancer. Slaoui currently serves on the board of Moderna Inc., which he will step down from along with other boards on which he is a member, including Lonza Group AG and SutroVax Inc. Perna, a former Army deputy chief of staff, has been heading the Army's worldwide supply chain since 2016.
Slaoui previously denied taking on a post in the Trump administration, telling Politico on Monday that he’s “the same venture capitalist you talked to last week.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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