May 2, 2022

Getting America Vaccinated at Warp Speed

Paul Mango

Public Advisor

Paul Mango was the Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2019-2021. During this time, he served as Secretary Azar’s formal liaison to Operation Warp Speed where he was involved in nearly all strategic, operational, and financial aspects of the program, and facilitated its day-to-day activities among the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Defense, and the White House. Prior to his role as Deputy Chief of Staff, Mango served from 2018-2019 as the Chief of Staff at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

In the early days of the pandemic, many worried about the status of their hospitalized loved ones and hoped that treatments for their symptoms would emerge. But health officials were already beginning to look further than simply therapeutics for COVID-19 symptoms: in January 2020 during the Trump administration, they established a project called “Operation Warp Speed” (OWS), aiming to develop the first COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible.

In Heinz College on Monday, April 25, Paul Mango talked to KDKA Anchor Jon Delano about Operation Warp Speed in an interview titled “The Untold Story of the Race to Save the World from COVID-19.” Mango, formerly Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was tasked with overseeing OWS on behalf of United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. After interviewing several of the people involved during the Trump and Biden administrations, Mango wrote the book “Warp Speed: Inside the Operation That Beat COVID, the Critics, and the Odds,” describing how OWS delivered vaccines to the public in the span of about eight months.

The full article can be found in The Tartan.

Public Health