Top Biden aide on COVID-19 vaccine to exit post next week
Misty Severi
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A top Biden aide who was behind the scenes of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout is stepping down from his position next week to teach at the University of California, San Francisco.
David Kessler, the chief science officer for the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response team, said he achieved what he had intended even though some people in the United States are still not vaccinated.
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“Six hundred sixty-five million vaccines, 13 million antivirals, we did what we set out to do,” Kessler told the New York Times on Friday. The numbers refer to the number of vaccines Americans have received since December 2020.
Kessler’s departure marks the end of Operation Warp Speed, which was launched under former President Donald Trump to develop and distribute COVID-19 vaccines. Kessler joined the Biden administration in January 2021. The Food and Drug Administration under Trump had already approved two mRNA vaccines, one by Pfizer and BioNTech and the other by Moderna. But logistics over how the vaccine would be distributed had not been settled.
Kessler also oversaw the funding for the vaccines, which were dispensed free of charge to everyone in the U.S.
“Our job was getting safe and effective vaccines to be accessible — and to make sure that everyone could have it and that it was easy,” Kessler told the New York Times over the summer.
Kessler is the latest health official to depart his post. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who served as Biden’s chief medical adviser, resigned from his post last month. Former Director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins left his post last year.
“For decades, Dr. Kessler has worked tirelessly to address our nation’s most challenging public health issues, and his work during the COVID-19 pandemic has been no different,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement shared with the Washington Post.
“Whether he was leading our effort to develop and distribute safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, or sharing his perspective during daily strategy sessions and data deliberations, Dr. Kessler’s contributions to our COVID-19 response have helped save lives,” he added.
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Prior to his stint in the Biden administration, Kessler worked as a commissioner in the FDA. He is most notable for taking on the tobacco industry in the 1990s.