On April 16th, Georgia-based Geovax said that the stop-work order on the next-generation COVID-19 vaccine from HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) went into effect on April 11 and affected an award of some $24.3 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). BARDA is an HHS component that was part of the Biden administration’s Project NextGen.

David Dodd, Geovax’s president and CEO, said at a conference on Wednesday that they “...had no prior indication that the notice was forthcoming. We were surprised by the notice as both ourselves and our external contractors and consultants were making good progress and had a seemingly productive working relationship with the technical team at BARDA.” 

President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have directed the department and other agencies to cut costs that are deemed wasteful or harmful to the agency’s goals. 

Unfortunately, GEO-CM04S1 - GeoVax’s vaccine, will still be developed, per the company. At least taxpayers are not paying for it. 

This is the second COVID-19 vaccine HHS has issued a stop-work order on. In February, a stop-work order was issued for a vaccine made by Vaxart several days before thousands of people were scheduled to start clinical trials with the vaccine.

Kennedy made it clear that oversight and thinking had to return to HHS under his watch, saying “Four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production, including Vaxart’s.”