Tony's Diary Package — page 1075

We had a 1 hour meeting today with all the relevant members of HHS (CDC, NIH, BARDA, ASPR, etc. ) led by deputy secretary Andrea Palm to work out the departmental approach towards the Ebola outbreak in Uganda. The NIH's (NIAID) major role will be to provide 100 doses of the Sudan specific ebola vaccine from our VRCfor Uganda. In order to go through the proper diplomatic channels, Dr. Tedros (DG of WHO) wrote me an official letter requesting that I send our hundred doses to Uganda (see below): Director_National Institute of Allergy a Oct. 2, 2022 We had multiple zooms today (with HHS folks) that will culminate with a briefing of secretary Becerra on the evolving situation of Ebola in Uganda. I brought up in the premating the consistent difficulties that we have with WHO who always want to actually design the protocols and then have organizations like NIH or CDC be the implementers of their protocols. This arrogance lies fundamentally with Anna Maria Restropo who has clashed frequently with Cliff Lane in prior Ebola situations dating back to 2014. We shall see how all of this plays out. Currently, there are 30 confirmed cases of Ebola in Uganda and more than 20 probable cases. In the zoom meetings we discussed all of the things that we discussed in the past when ebola struck West Africa and DRC. This has to do with the availability of testing, with the issue of travel into the country of people who might be infected with ebola, as well as our role in supplying vaccines testing and therapies in the form of monoclonal antibodies and other drugs to the Ugandans. More to come. Becerra backs my concern about the WHO trying to dictate the design of clinical trials. I referred to Anna Maria Restropo without mentioning her name. Becerra gets it. Oct. 4, 2022 Starting to get significant uptick in cases in the UK. This is troublesome since we usually follow them by about four to five weeks. Oct. 5, 2022 An example of the White House over ruling CDC. Rochelle and the CDC do not want to require entry screening of people coming in from Uganda in the context of ebola; however, the White House is very hyper about covering all the bases and on demanding a modified form of entry screening even though Uganda is requiring exit screening. PRESS: CBS "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Oct. 6, 2022