Mon­cef Slaoui hasn’t start­ed mak­ing plans for his sum­mer va­ca­tion next year. But he of­fers high odds that all Amer­i­cans will be able to do that in the not too dis­tant fu­ture.

In an in­ter­view with a pair of sym­pa­thet­ic pod­cast­ers at the con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can En­ter­prise In­sti­tute, Slaoui pro­vides an ed­u­ca­tion to lis­ten­ers on how any drug or vac­cine can be sped through tri­als. And he leaves the door wide open to the no­tion that the lead­ing vac­cine de­vel­op­ers can demon­strate ef­fi­ca­cy and safe­ty in a com­pelling fash­ion as ear­ly as Oc­to­ber — or as late as the end of this year.

But Slaoui says he is quite con­fi­dent that based on what he knows now, there’s good rea­son to be hope­ful that vac­cines will be avail­able in suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ty to cov­er all the at-risk pop­u­la­tion in the US — up to 40 mil­lion peo­ple — by the end of Feb­ru­ary. And he’s look­ing for sev­er­al vac­cines to cross the fin­ish line, so that the ex­perts can choose which are the most like­ly to work based on de­mo­graph­ics and risk.

Slaoui’s po­si­tion on this will be close­ly fol­lowed. He end­ed a 30-year stint at GSK as chair­man of the vac­cines group, top­ping it off with the high­ly suc­cess­ful Shin­grix pro­gram. With his switch to OWS, Slaoui di­vest­ed his Mod­er­na shares — jump­ing from the board of one of the lead­ing vac­cine de­vel­op­ers to OWS — but kept his GSK stock, which trig­gered some crit­i­cism that he’s still clear­ly deeply re­sent­ful about.

For crit­ics, it’s all fod­der for dis­cus­sion as every­one fo­cus­es in on the high­ly po­tent top­ic of whether Pres­i­dent Trump will force through a vac­cine an­nounce­ment — herald­ing a suc­cess­ful piv­otal tri­al — in time to in­flu­ence the elec­tion. And like every ex­pert in the gov­ern­ment, from FDA com­mis­sion­er Stephen Hahn to NI­AID di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Fau­ci, Slaoui says the sci­ence will be all that mat­ters.

Draw­ing from a tran­script of the call, here’s Slaoui de­scrib­ing in de­tail how vac­cine de­vel­op­ment is done:

We’re run­ning very large tri­als be­cause they al­low us to reach ef­fi­ca­cy faster, not be­cause there’s an elec­tion, be­cause there’s thou­sands of peo­ple dy­ing every day. And the da­ta will be de­fined by the num­ber of cas­es. There is no date. It’s im­pos­si­ble to give you a date. I have been asked about dates, and I didn’t feel any pres­sure what­so­ev­er to say da­ta will de­fine the date. When we have the num­ber of cas­es re­quired and then we have an in­de­pen­dent da­ta safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing board in­de­pen­dent­ly look in­to the da­ta and says we need to con­tin­ue, we need to stop be­cause this is not work­ing, or we need to stop be­cause this is work­ing too well, it’s un­eth­i­cal to con­tin­ue, we now need to start to give the vac­cine to the place­bo arm in the tri­al and to oth­er peo­ple to con­sid­er, then that will be the end. So the end of the tri­als is com­plete­ly in­de­pen­dent of the op­er­a­tion or any­body in­volved in the op­er­a­tion. It’s ac­tu­al­ly great aca­d­e­m­ic ex­perts, whose names are un­known to the pub­lic who are look­ing in­to that da­ta. And this is how all clin­i­cal tri­als are al­ways done. That is how clin­i­cal tri­als are done.

So when will we know?

So the da­ta will dic­tate, the facts will dic­tate. We may have the end point in Oc­to­ber. We may have it in No­vem­ber 4th, who knows? We may have it in De­cem­ber 15th. That’s the an­swer, and to be hon­est, on a per­son­al ba­sis, I would re­sign in­stant­ly if I was forced to do some­thing that I thought would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

From the pod­cast­ers: What’s your time­line? Or what’s your thought on that?

I hope we will have enough dos­es of vac­cines in the first two months of 2021 to im­mu­nize the at risk pop­u­la­tions in the US, vac­cines that could have shown ef­fi­ca­cy and ap­proved in­de­pen­dent­ly by the FDA. And I’m talk­ing about maybe the 30 to 40 mil­lion most sus­cep­ti­ble peo­ple in the US across maybe De­cem­ber, Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary.

And then and I think that should de­crease dra­mat­i­cal­ly the bur­den of this dis­ease on so­ci­ety in gen­er­al. Be­cause, as you know, most of the bur­den of the dis­ease is on a high risk pop­u­la­tion. Plus the sec­ondary ef­fect of over­whelm­ing the hos­pi­tal sys­tems, et cetera, which has an im­pact on oth­er pop­u­la­tions for oth­er rea­sons. And I think, from there on, it’s go­ing to be a grad­ual process that will be a bal­ance be­tween the ben­e­fits/risks that the vac­cines will have shown and the risk of par­tic­u­lar sub­pop­u­la­tion.

For in­stance, frankly, im­mu­niz­ing the pe­di­atric pop­u­la­tion, tod­dlers, et cetera, will be some­thing that should be re­al­ly far be­cause they have 70 or 80 years to live. And we need prob­a­bly there to use plat­form tech­nolo­gies that are well un­der­stood in the long range, such as pro­tein based vac­cines, et cetera. We are for­tu­nate that most­ly in that pop­u­la­tion the dis­ease bur­den is very, very low. And so, I think there will be a gra­di­ent of views. But prob­a­bly be­tween the first quar­ter and the sec­ond quar­ter of 2021, the most at risk pop­u­la­tions will have been, I hope, im­mu­nized. And life, I would ex­pect… I hope next sum­mer I can have a va­ca­tion, nor­mal va­ca­tion.

What­ev­er hap­pens to his va­ca­tion plans, one thing seems cer­tain. Mil­lions of peo­ple will be ar­gu­ing over the de­vel­op­ment time­line right un­til the elec­tion is de­cid­ed.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals is making a name for itself, at least in terms of suing the FDA.

The DC-headquartered firm on Monday filed its latest suit against the agency, with the company raising concerns over the FDA’s failure to grant a fast track designation for Vanda’s potential chronic digestive disorder drug tradipitant, which is a neurokinin 1 receptor antagonist.

Specifically, Vanda said FDA’s “essential point” in its one-page denial letter on the designation pointed to “the lack of necessary safety data,” which was “inconsistent with the criteria for … Fast Track designation.”

Pfizer and BioNTech said Monday that they’re ready to approach the FDA this week with early data for their booster shot for Covid-19 vaccine in the youngest age group (6 months to under 5 years), which showed 80.3% efficacy based on 10 symptomatic Covid cases identified beginning seven days after the third dose.

“The study suggests that a low 3-ug dose of our vaccine, carefully selected based on tolerability data, provides young children with a high level of protection against the recent COVID-19 strains,” Uğur Şahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech said in a statement. “We are preparing the relevant documents and expect completing the submission process to the FDA this week, with submissions to EMA and other regulatory agencies to follow within the coming weeks.”

After Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla announced last month that the world’s largest vaccine maker stopped producing doses of Covid-19 vaccines back in December, the institute is looking to expand.

The CEO told Reuters Monday that the company is considering establishing its first manufacturing plant in Africa in its next step toward global expansion after successfully mass producing and selling hundreds of millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses out of its India-based facilities.