BREAKING: FDA Advisory Committee Votes for Emergency Use Authorization for Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccination

Reed RichardsonDec 10th, 2020, 5:53 pm
 

The FDA Advisory Committee approved Pfizer for emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine on Thursday evening, paving the way for an immediate nationwide rollout aimed at stopping the pandemic.

 The agency’s Advisory Committee voted after weeks of reviewing data sent from the pharmaceutical company, which found its vaccine was 95% effective in its Phase 3 trial. In all, 17 members of the board voted in favor of approving the vaccine, four voted against and one abstained. The few votes against the approval did not question the vaccine’s efficacy, but were instead focused on a narrow dispute about the need to inoculate young people from ages 16 – 25.

Speaking on CNN about the momentous step, Dr. Sanjay Gupta called the the FDA endorsement “pretty overwhelmingly positive in terms of recommending this emergency use authorization.”

“So pretty big moment considering how quickly this has all sort of transpired,” he added. “We’ll see what the FDA says tonight and tomorrow and, likely as we talked about for some time, next week we could see this vaccine actually being used, being injected for the first time in the United States outside of a trial.”

With the FDA approval, the CDC will now trigger its months-long Operation Warp Speed plans for distributing millions of already manufactured and pre-positioned doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

Watch the video above, via CNN.

Tags: