Tony's Diary Package — page 894

vi ae Department of Health & Social Care Prof. Chris Whitty CB FMedSci Chief Medical Officer for England 39 Victoria St, London, SW1H OEU F: chris.whitty@dhsc,gov.uk Y @CMO England Many thanks Dear Tony I hope all is good. We have discussed very considerable concern we have about people who have taken part in properly regulated vaccine trials then not being able to travel because they are not counted as 'vaccinated' for some countries. This is a major public health own gaol, because it is now proving a substantial disincentive to people taking part in trials, or to withdrawing from them. We think this is an easily fixable problem, but getting the international system to fix it is proving slow and difficult. A group of senior scientific and medical advisers to government in Europe has drafted a letter on this. I attach it for your interest, and in case you were also interested in being a cosignatory. Best wishes Chris 20210929 - DRAFT open letter on immu On our usual weekly call with Secretary Becerra, we discussed the issue of getting many many more testing kits for home testing out into the community. We are talking about hundreds of millions of tests which the Brits and others are doing to follow people particularly those with asymptomatic infection who may be spreading infection. This has been a weak point in the US government approach for some time now. Although Carol Johnson has been the key person for testing for the US government, it appears now that Tom Ingelsby is going to be playing a major role. this is also somewhat connected with the fact that the CDC is not really doing a very good job of screening for asymptomatic breakthrough infections among vaccinated people. Francis Collins told me a few days ago that he is going to announce his retirement on October 6th. I was one of the only people he told and we were hoping that it would not leak. He gave an exclusive interview to the Washington Post to Lenny Bernstein and Carolyn Johnson. While I was on my walk tonight with Christine I got a call from Erin Banco from The Daily Beast. Ellen asked me if I knew that Francis was going to announce his retirement. I told her "no comment"; she asked again and I said "no comment". I immediately called up Francis and alerted him that someone had leaked it. He now has to make up his mind whether he's going to