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America’s leading infectious disease expert has apologized for suggesting that UK authorities were quick to authorize a COVID-19 vaccine, saying he has “great faith” in the country’s regulators.
r. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had sparked controversy with an earlier interview in which he said that UK regulators had not acted “as carefully” as the US Food and Drug Administration.
Fauci said Thursday night that he meant that the US authorities do things differently than their British counterparts, not better, but that his comments were not worded correctly.
“I have great faith in both the scientific community and the regulatory community in the UK, and anyone who knows me and my relationship with that for literally decades already knows that is the case,” Fauci told the BBC. .
Britain became the first Western nation to authorize the widespread use of a COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday when regulators gave emergency approval to a product made by US pharmaceuticals Pfizer and Germany-based BioNTech. Critics have suggested that UK regulators emphasized speed over thoroughness when reviewing data on the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness.
Fauci rejected that idea.
The FDA has to act more slowly because of the high degree of skepticism about vaccines in the United States, Fauci said. Because of this, US regulators are reviewing all the raw data from Pfizer and BioNTech “in a way that could not possibly have been done more quickly,” he said.
The FDA will take at least another week to complete its review, but the United States and Britain will eventually end up in the same place, Fauci said.
“At the end of the day, it will be safe, it will be effective,” he said. “People in the UK are going to get it, and they’re going to do very well, and people in the US are going to get it, and we’re going to do pretty well.”
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