So many things have happened this week alone concerning the COVID-19. First, the UK government began administering the Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and then cyber attacks with stolen documentations and now the most recent is about the U.S. Food and Drug Association approving the emergency use of the Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
With this news, the vaccination campaign can start as soon as next week after a panel set up to debate the approval of the vaccine gave positive support for the vaccine.
“The FDA’s authorization for emergency use of the first COVID-19 vaccine is a significant milestone in battling this devastating pandemic,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn.
“Today’s action,” Hahn continued, “follows an open and transparent review process that included input from independent scientific and public health experts and a thorough evaluation by the agency’s career scientists to ensure this vaccine met FDA’s rigorous, scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization.”
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The authorization is as a result of the daylong FDA meeting that was held on Thursday during which an advisory panel voted in support of the vaccine which was developed by American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in collaboration with German BioNTech that had shown to be 95% effective during clinical trials.
With the approval, it’s definitely not going to be the entire populace of the United States that will have immediate access to the vaccine which will be taken in two doses.
Just as the UK approached things, the US government also puts the the aged and those with underlying health conditions as well as health professionals as the top priorities while the big pharma Pfizer said its expected to produce about 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 while increasing the number to 1.3 billion by 2021.
Earlier on Friday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said his agency would work with Pfizer to get the vaccine shipped out.
“We could be seeing people getting vaccinated Monday or Tuesday of next week,” Azar said on Good Morning America.
The vaccine is administered as a series of two doses, three weeks apart.
The vaccine was developed using experimental mRNA which is a molecule that tells the cells how to build proteins. With this, it can then trick cells into producing proteins that are found in the SARS-CoV-2 (Coronavirus, the virus that causes COVID-19) and then enhance the immune system all without making the patient sick in which case the body is prepared to fight off the infection when it actually get attacked by the real coronavirus.
The United Kingdom started its own vaccine roll out after approving the vaccine made by Pfizer making it the first country to use this type of vaccine as well as being the first western country to do so while the first individual outside of the clinical trial to get immunized is a 90-year-old Margaret Keenan who will be 91 soon. our million others in the UK will also be shot by December and Canada had also approved the vaccine on Wednesday.
Experts believes that there will be enough vaccines to go round by 2021 as more companies are coming out with successful clinical trials. Moderna had also applied for approval in the United States while others like Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are also filing to apply.
