Anthony S. Fauci, chief medical adviser to the administration, and David Kessler, chief science officer for the covid-19 response, began brainstorming the idea late last year. With remarkably effective vaccines rolling out, their initial focus was on drugs that could make the next pandemic less devastating. But as virus variants emerged and it became clear that even a historic vaccination campaign wasn’t likely to eradicate the coronavirus, they accelerated the deadline.
“The focus was to reinvigorate the nation’s antiviral program over the next three to five years. What’s become more clear, as the pandemic has come into focus, is we have to do it this fall,” Kessler said. “We need this set of tools to close out this pandemic. … The hard thing is to recognize with all the success, there’s still several hundred deaths a day.”
The $3.2 billion represents a multiyear investment to jump-start basic science research to develop new drugs and test whether existing drugs show promise. The funding will support clinical research and manufacturing. The focus initially is on this coronavirus but will expand into collaborative drug discovery programs focused on viruses that have the potential to spark a pandemic.
At the same time, the government has started placing preorders for antiviral drugs for this pandemic — before they have been shown to work. It’s a strategy similar to the one used to encourage vaccine development.
“The aim of the program is to catalyze the development of new medicines to combat covid-19, but also to provide a structure, a durable structure, to prepare from a therapeutic standpoint against any of the pandemic threats,” Fauci said.
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