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Following an emergency approval by the FDA, delivery of the corona vaccine by Mainz-based pharmaceutical company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer is starting in the US. Shipping company Fedex announced Sunday that its subsidiary Fedex Express was beginning to ship the vaccine, which was frozen with dry ice.
FDA chief Stephen Hahn called the emergency approval a “significant milestone in the fight against this devastating pandemic.” Biontech co-founder Ugur Sahin said the approval and upcoming use of the vaccine would “help save lives across the United States and accelerate a return to normalcy.”
According to media reports, the White House is said to have urged the FDA to obtain immediate emergency approval with threats of release. FDA chief Hahn rejected this on Saturday. “Science and data guided the FDA’s decision,” he said.
US President Donald Trump had called the agency a “big, old, slow turtle.” He promised his compatriots on Twitter the first vaccines over the weekend. However, the White House expert in charge of vaccination logistics, Gustave Perna, said vaccines will only start this Monday. However, the number of skeptics about vaccines is also high in the United States.
Joe Biden’s ambitious plan
Pfizer and Biontech had also applied to the European Medicines Agency (Ema) for approval of the corona vaccine; a decision is still pending. Earlier this month, UK authorities granted emergency approval to this drug. Britain has already started vaccinating. Canada, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Mexico have also issued approvals. Russian and Chinese vaccines are already used in several countries.
Republican Trump lost the US election on November 3 to Democrat Joe Biden. Experts also attribute this to Trump’s much-criticized handling of the pandemic. After being sworn in on January 20, Biden wants to implement a 100-day plan to fight the corona virus. This includes administering at least 100 million doses of a vaccine within this period.
The pandemic remains out of control in the United States. To date, more than 16 million Americans have been infected. On Saturday, Johns Hopkins University (JHU, Baltimore) recorded 2,368 deaths with a confirmed coronavirus infection. The peak was recorded on Friday with more than 3,300 deaths. A total of 297,837 people died with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen.
The United States government has contractually secured the delivery of 100 million doses of Pfizer / Biontech vaccines. The American pharmaceutical company Moderna also announced on Friday that the American government was purchasing another 100 million doses of its candidate vaccine. These cans would be delivered in the second quarter of 2021. The Moderna vaccine has not yet been approved by the FDA.
