Here. It. Comes.

Amid the horrors of the pandemic and America’s mishandling of it, some good news: Operation Warp Speed could produce a vaccine soon

- Stephanie Baker and Cynthia Koons With David Kocieniewski

On a late August day in an industrial corner of Baltimore that had been mostly silenced by the pandemic, a redbrick manufacturing plant was buzzing with activity. Deep in the building, in a zone called Area 3, the stainless steel shell of a bioreactor lay on its side, having just arrived from Massachusetts. Employees had begun the task of making the bioreactor operational. Within weeks it would be the center of a production line for coronavirus vaccines.

When the owner of the plant, Emergent BioSolutions Inc., ordered the bioreactor, one supplier said some critical parts wouldn’t arrive until November or December. And so Emergent enlisted the help of Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s mission to accelerate development of a Covid-19 vaccine. Officials working with OWS, a couple of whom are embedded with Emergent, called the supplier to say the order couldn’t wait, throwing the weight of the government behind the request. “It’s almost like having that Bat-Signal,” says Syed Husain, who heads the company’s contract manufacturing business. “They’ve been a great partner for us.”