The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved this Friday the emergency authorization for the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the United States.
The United States has thus become the sixth country in the world to authorize the use of the vaccine after the United Kingdom, Canada, Bahrain, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
It is expected that 2.9 million doses will be shipped for use in the country next week.
The advisers of the institution had positively analyzed the vaccine this Thursday and it was expected that its approval would be imminent.
THE FIRST VACCINE IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS
The US President, Donald Trump, has indicated that the first vaccine will be put in less than 24 hours in a video broadcast from his Twitter account.
However, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention must still authorize the use of vaccines at the meeting that will be held this Saturday morning, so other calculations place the start of vaccination in the country on Sunday and Monday North American.
Trump has defined as a “medical miracle” and as “one of the greatest scientific achievements” the development of a vaccine in nine months in this same video.
The president has assured that the pandemic will end “soon once and for all”, while he has stressed the safety of the vaccine and that it has no side effects.
The governors of each state have autonomy to decide where and how the vaccines will be given, although Trump has stressed that it will be free and that health workers and the elderly will be vaccinated first.
PRESSURES PRIOR TO APPROVAL
In the hours before the emergency authorization, several US media reported that Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had called FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and would have told him that in case the vaccine was not approved this Friday, he should “resign”.
Hahn has issued a statement distancing himself from this “representation” of his conversation with Meadows, but previously it had been Trump himself who had charged against the FDA leader through Twitter.
Trump called the organization a “big old slow turtle” and asked Hahn to give him “the fucking shots now.” In that same message, he also urged him to “stop playing games and start saving lives.”
Regarding the call from the chief of staff, the White House only pointed out that these types of conversations about the advancement of the vaccine are common between the Government and the FDA.
A VACCINE IN THE WORST OF THE PANDEMIC
The vaccine has arrived in the United States when it is going through its worst moment in the fight against the pandemic, since only last Thursday the country registered 224,000 cases and 2,934 deaths.
With the emergency approval, the 2.9 million prepared doses will reach 636 selected places in the country in the next 24 hours, according to the ABC News television network.
Hahn has defined the approval of the vaccine as a “milestone” in the fight against the pandemic, while the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, has stated that “he could not be more proud” of the scientists involved in the Investigation process.
