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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the body that regulates the marketing of drugs, on Friday authorized the use of the vaccine against Covid-19 from the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
The authorization was signed by the FDA on Friday night, hours after the White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, warn the agency director, Stephen Hahn, that he could prepare his resignation if he did not process it today.
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 6th country in the world to authorize the Pfizer vaccine after the UK, 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.
THE FIRST AMERICAN WILL GET VACCINATED WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS
Minutes after the FDA authorized its use, the outgoing president of the United States, Donald trump, announced that Pfizer’s vaccine has begun to be distributed throughout the country and that the first dose will be administered in the next 24 hours.
“Through our alliance with Fedex and UPS, we have already started shipping the vaccine to every state and zip code in the country; the first vaccine will be administered in less than 24 hours.“Trump announced in a speech from the Oval Office.
In his speech, Trump explained that “Governors decide where vaccines go in their states and who will get them first.”
“We want – he added – that our elderly, health and emergency workers are the first. That will quickly and dramatically reduce deaths and hospitalizations.”
“When the virus from China invaded our coasts, I promised that we would produce a vaccine in record time before the end of the year, they said it could not be done, but with today’s announcement we have achieved that goal,” he said.
The vaccines that Trump announced are being distributed throughout the country are part of the first batch with 2.9 million doses that the officials in charge of the delivery operation assured that they could be sent in the first 24 hours after authorization.
A KEY MOMENT
Pfizer’s vaccine arrives in the worst moment of the pandemic for the United States, which averages more than 200,000 infections daily and that this week has broken the barrier of 3,000 deaths in a 24-hour period.
The most recent data indicate that there are 15,834,965 infections and 294,874 deaths from Covid-19, more than in any other country, according to an independent count from Johns Hopkins University.
