The United States thus becomes the sixth country in the world to authorize the Pfizer vaccine after the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Mexico.
By:
EFE
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States, the body that regulates the marketing of drugs, authorized the use of the vaccine against covid-19 from the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer on Friday night 11-D.
The authorization was signed by the FDA on Friday night, hours after White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows warned the agency’s director, Stephen Hahn, that he could prepare his resignation if he did not process it this same Friday.
President Trump had also demanded on Twitter the FDA to release “the damn vaccine.”
In a statement, Hahn said that “today’s decision follows an open and transparent review process that included input from independent scientists and public health experts and a thorough evaluation by the agency’s scientific professionals.”
The United States thus becomes the sixth country in the world to authorize the Pfizer vaccine after the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Mexico.
This emergency authorization (an exceptional process prior to approval) comes after this Thursday an advisory committee on vaccines of the FDA gave its approval with 17 votes in favor, only 4 against and one abstention to the Pfizer vaccine.
Pfizer’s vaccine comes at the worst moment of the pandemic for the United States, which averages more than 200,000 infections a day and this week has broken the barrier of 3,000 deaths in a period of 24 hours.
The most recent data indicates that there are 15,834,965 infections and 294,874 deaths from covid-19, more than in any other country, according to the independent count from Johns Hopkins University.
Pfizer has promised 25 million doses before the end of the year (each vaccinated needs two doses) and 100 million when March arrives.
The first batch with 2.9 million doses could be distributed across the United States within the next 24 hours, according to federal officials tasked with getting the vaccine nationwide.
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