The US Food and Drug Administration granted the emergency use of the Pfizer/Biontech Covid-19 vaccine on Friday. This makes US the sixth country to clear the use of the drug to fight the coronavirus after Britain, Bahrain, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico.
The United Kingdom gave its clearance on the 2nd of December and 90-year-old Margaret Keenan was the first person to be given the COVID-19 vaccine as part of the mass vaccination programme being rolled out across the UK
According to the New York Times, “the F.D.A.’s decision followed an extraordinary sequence of events on Friday morning when the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, to consider looking for his next job if he didn’t get the emergency approval done on Friday, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. Dr. Hahn then ordered vaccine regulators at the agency to do it by the end of the day.”
Shipment of the vaccine is expected to begin immediately, with 2.9 million doses in the initial shipment order and the U.S. intends to distribute around 25 million doses by the end of 2020.
Pfizer has a deal with the U.S. government to supply 100 million doses of the vaccine by next March. Under that agreement, the shots will be free to the public.
Some days ago, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that its COVID-19 vaccine, BNT162b2, was found to be more that 90% effective in preventing COVID-19.
A similar vaccine, developed by Moderna, is also under review by the F.D.A. and could soon be cleared for emergency use.
As at the time of writing this article, 16 million cases have been reported in the US and 296,000 people have died from the virus.
