FDA Grants Emergency Use for Pfizer COVID Vaccine | International

The director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says efforts are underway to distribute the country’s first COVID-19 vaccine. “With this authorization, we know that our federal partners are already moving to distribute the first doses of the vaccine across the country,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn told reporters at an online news conference Saturday. . On Friday, the United States gave the final go-ahead to the vaccine from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. Hahn says the vaccine is safe and very protective. While the FDA’s decision came only after public review of data from an ongoing large study, it has also been haunted by intense political pressure from the Trump administration, which has accused the agency of being too slow and He even threatened to remove Hahn if a ruling did not come on Friday. “Statements in the press that they threatened to fire me if we didn’t do it by a certain date are inaccurate,” he said.