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Perna is responsible for the logistics of Operation Warp Speed, the White House vaccination project. The corona vaccine from Biontech and Pfizer received emergency approval in the United States on Friday night (local time). Now it can be used in people over 16 years old.
The president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, had previously promised his compatriots that vaccination should begin this weekend. “The first vaccine will be delivered in less than 24 hours,” Trump said in a video posted on Twitter. However, his Minister of Health, Alex Azar, had spoken of “Monday or Tuesday.”
According to media reports, the White House threatened FDA Director Stephen Hahn with urgent approval of the vaccine. The Washington Post reported that the White House chief of staff asked Hahn to resign if the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine is not approved before the end of the day. The New York Times reported that Meadows had told Hahn not to consider looking for another job.
The FDA disagreed with these reports. Hahn himself spoke in a statement to the US media about “a false representation of the phone call with the chief of staff.” The FDA has been “encouraged” to expeditiously process the BioNTech and Pfizer application. “Science and data guided the FDA’s decision,” Hahn emphasized at a news conference Saturday. Due to the urgency of the pandemic, the approval process, which generally took months, could be shortened to several weeks, especially since the responsible employees worked day and night, Hahn said. “External pressure” played no role in this.
Meanwhile, the number of infections in the US has reached a new high of 231,775. Additionally, 3,309 deaths were reported on Saturday morning. This means that 24-hour corona deaths in the US have reached a new record high. The highest value to date was recorded last Wednesday with 3,124 deaths. In total, more than 15.8 million people have been infected with the coronavirus in the United States. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 295,522 people have died from the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen.
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