27/10/2020
Transcript
Dr. Bailey: Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for the second AMA led discussion about the process that will eventually lead us to a vaccine for COVID-19. I'm Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association. The purpose of this call is to help physicians and the public have a better understanding of the vaccine development process, as well as allocation and distribution of a vaccine, or vaccines, when they become available. We appreciate all of you for taking the time to be a part of today's call and we kindly ask that if you're not a health care provider that you log off from the session at this time. Thanks.
Dr. Bailey: Now, if you weren't able to join us for last week’s call with Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, I encourage you to watch a video replay of our conversation, which can be found in our online COVID-19 resource center on our website. You can Google AMA COVID-19 resource center, or just type in ama-assn.org/COVID-19.
Dr. Bailey: Before I introduce our special guests for today's call, I want to take a moment on behalf of everyone at the AMA to send out my most sincere and heartfelt thank you to physicians everywhere who've responded so heroically to this pandemic. 2020 has tested us in ways that few could have imagined, but time and again, physicians, nurses and our entire health care community, have risen to the challenge of this moment. We still have a lot of work to do ahead of us to defeat COVID-19, but we know that the development of a safe and effective vaccine is a critical step toward a return to normalcy. The AMA has championed the widespread use of vaccines since the early 1960s, when the Sabin oral vaccine was developed to combat polio, and vaccines remain among the safest and most effective ways to prevent illness and protect public health.
Dr. Bailey: Of course, all of us are eagerly awaiting a vaccine for COVID-19, but we cannot rush the development of a vaccine at the expense of rigorous safety oversight. Rushing an unsafe or ineffective vaccine to market would compound the devastating effect of COVID-19. It was so important to hear from Dr. Marks at the FDA last week about the rigorous evidence-based safeguards in place during this accelerated vaccine development process.
Dr. Bailey: So today our guests will share their unique insights and perspectives into the planning and framework for successfully allocating and distributing a COVID-19 vaccine or vaccines. They'll discuss the role of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, and providing recommendations for use of vaccines in the US civilian population. And they'll talk about the work of the CDC to ensure, once we have a safe and effective vaccine, that it's distributed across the country and that the appropriate data collection system is in place to track the vaccine supply, administration and monitor its safety.
Dr. Bailey: And they'll discuss the role physicians play in vaccine administration, and in promoting vaccine confidence. In a time of heightened concerns about this pandemic and with so much information, and disinformation, on vaccines in general, spreading online, the process we use to engage a skeptical public is critical to understand and discuss. Nobody understands this better than our two guests today. Dr. Nancy Messonnier is director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, the NCIRD, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Messonnier has held a number of prominent leadership positions within the CDC, including serving as deputy director of NCIRD and leading the agency's meningitis and vaccine preventable disease branch from 2007 to 2012. An expert in global health and surveillance initiatives, Dr. Messonnier has spearheaded prevention and control for bacterial meningitis in the U.S. and in hotspots around the world.
Dr. Bailey: And we also are glad to have Dr. Amanda Cohn, the acting chief medical officer at NCIRD and executive secretary for the ACIP. Dr. Cohn, who's board certified in pediatrics, has led or played integral roles in multiple domestic and international meningococcal disease outbreak response efforts since joining the CDC in 2004.
Dr. Bailey: We're delighted to have both of these amazing physicians, these experienced infectious disease experts, with us today. After their remarks, we will have some questions that have been submitted in advance by the audience. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Nancy Messonnier and Dr. Amanda Cohn. Thank you. Dr. Messonnier, it's all yours.
Dr. Messonnier: Great. Thank you Dr. Bailey and thank you to the AMA for inviting us here today. Dr. Cohn and I, in our day jobs, work on a variety of vaccines, but we are now both deployed to the CDC emergency response to work specifically on planning for COVID vaccines. You can go on to the next slide. You all are true heroes in everything you've done this year. What I'm going to talk to you today is really the next step in those roles and I will start by saying that we understand your incredible importance in this planning around COVID vaccine delivery. The U.S. government has made a huge investment in developing and manufacturing safe and effective COVID vaccines, and yet, a vaccine that is safe and effective sitting on a shelf, is not helpful. For these vaccines to be useful, need to be used safely and effectively, and that's what we're going to talk to you about today.