By: Robert G. Kramer, CEO, Emergent –
Global public health is at a critical inflection point. Do we learn the lessons of this pandemic and build a modern public health infrastructure to prepare us for the next one? Or do we repeat the mistakes of the current and past pandemics?
This week, Senate HELP Committee Chair Patty Murray and Ranking Member Richard Burr released a bipartisan draft bill aimed at evolving America’s pandemic preparedness commensurate with the challenges we face. The bill adds to the important public policy conversation ongoing in Washington, which includes President Biden’s ambitious $65 billion initiative for preparedness.
Getting the public policy right is paramount to meeting the challenges of the next pandemic and, as I said at the JP Morgan health conference in early January, I firmly believe that the private sector has a critical role to play in meeting future global public health challenges. Some will argue that Emergent has no role to play in preparing for future public health threats due to our well-publicized issues in ramping up our Baltimore manufacturing facility. I disagree.
Biomanufacturing and public health are complicated fields. The 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic taught us we lacked sufficient domestic manufacturing capacity. The last two years have taught us the capacity we built wasn’t at a sufficient level of readiness. Based on our efforts to address those identified issues at our Bayview facility, Emergent has the battle scars and experience to provide critical insight into what comes next.
It’s no secret that large pharmaceutical companies avoid entering the public health threats space. It’s not known for blockbuster drugs with billions of dollars of revenue. The market is narrow, the needs are pressing, dealing with the government is complicated, and the spotlight for failure is bright. Trust me, we know.
When this pandemic began, we didn’t know which type of vaccine would be most effective. That’s why governments and the private sector placed bets on multiple vaccine platforms. The success of mRNA technologies during this pandemic has some believing we should only prepare to manufacture mRNA vaccines. That’s the wrong lesson to learn. To truly be prepared for the future, we need to take an expansive view of potential public health threats and start creating new capabilities, thinking beyond vaccines and working collaboratively to incentivize the private sector to be better prepared before the next public health threat strikes.
The Murray-Burr bipartisan legislation would encourage more timely and transparent communication between federal preparedness agencies and their industry partners. As we learned during our experience battling COVID-19, clear and consistent communication is paramount. Government needs the expertise and capabilities of the private industry. Private industry needs the commitment and resources of government to achieve of state of readiness and quickly scale. The first step to improving that public private relationship comes through consistent and transparent communication.
At Emergent, we will continue supporting the government’s preparedness efforts for existing public health threats like smallpox, anthrax and chemical weapons agents. These are products we hope we never need, but we need them to be ready in case we do. We will continue to improve and expand that capability and leverage it for our public and private sector clients.
We encourage other companies to step forward and invest in the therapeutics, tests, and vaccines that we’ll need in the future. Unfortunately, given how hard these situations are to predict, normal market forces don’t drive enough investment. Government needs to create the conditions to attract private sector investment in these areas. We can’t wait for the next crisis to invest. As the old Chinese proverb goes “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”