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The vaccination campaign in the US can begin: the first vaccination centers will receive the corona vaccine from Biontech and Pfizer at the beginning of the week. The US Drug Agency had previously granted an emergency approval.
The corona vaccine from Mainz-based company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer should be available in the United States starting Monday. Delivery has begun, said General Gustave Perna, logistics officer for “Operation Warp Speed,” the US government’s crown vaccination project. The first 145 vaccination centers would receive the vaccine on Monday and the first delivery phase would be completed on Wednesday.
According to Operation Warp Speed, the first shipment to the US states will include around three million doses of vaccine. A similar amount is held in reserve. In addition to health officials, nursing home residents should get vaccinated first. “The vaccine will be used from Monday,” Perna said.
Medicines Agency grants emergency approval
The Pfizer Biontech vaccine received emergency approval in the United States on Friday night. The United States is the sixth country to give the green light to the vaccine. Britain was the first to issue an emergency license, followed by Canada, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and, most recently, Mexico. The examination is still ongoing in the EU: the European Medicines Agency (EMA) wants to make a decision before December 29.
The FDA’s decision was made just three weeks after Pfizer and Biontech applied for emergency approval. US President Donald Trump had previously put massive pressure on the FDA to immediately issue emergency approval. On Friday, he described the agency as a “big, old, slow turtle” on Twitter. Government sources said Washington had even threatened to fire FDA chief Stephen Hahn.
FDA chief: “outside pressure” didn’t matter
Hahn himself assured that the approval had not been accelerated under pressure from the White House. “Science and data guided the FDA’s decision,” he told a news conference. Due to the urgency of the pandemic, the approval process, which normally took months, could be shortened to several weeks, especially since the responsible employees worked day and night. “External pressure” played no role, Hahn said.
In numerical terms, the United States is the country most affected by the Crown crisis. Most recently, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported 244,011 new infections in one day. More than 3,000 people died in 24 hours from or with the corona virus. The total number of corona deaths in the US is now nearly 295,000.
