United States health authorities, shipping services and hospitals stood ready on Friday to immediately launch a mass-inoculation campaign of unparalleled dimension, as federal regulators granted emergency approval to the first COVID-19 vaccine in the United States.
A panel of outside advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration on Thursday (Dec 10) voted overwhelmingly to endorse emergency use of Pfizer Inc's coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for the agency to authorize the shot for a nation that has lost more than 285,000 lives to Covid-19.
US drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said on Wednesday that documents related to the development of their Covid-19 vaccine had been “unlawfully accessed” in a cyberattack on Europe’s medicines regulator. The European Medicines Agency, EMA, which assesses medicines and vaccines for the EU said hours earlier it had been targeted in a cyber attack.
Britain's medicine regulator has advised that people with a history of significant allergic reactions do not get Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine after two people reported adverse effects on the first day of rollout.
Ms Margaret Keenan, the 90-year-old grandmother who became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine outside of a trial in Britain on Tuesday, has a message for others: “Go for it” to beat the devastating disease.
The World Health Organization said on Wednesday it had received data from Pfizer and BioNTech on the Covid-19 vaccine and was reviewing it for “possible listing for emergency use”, a benchmark for countries to authorize national use.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson might be persuaded to take a COVID-19 vaccination on television to show it is safe but he would not have one before those in greater need, his press secretary said on Wednesday.
The United States hopes to have immunized 100 million people against Covid-19 by the end of February, a top official said on Wednesday, which is approximately 40% of the country's adult population.
The United Kingdom steps forward the United States and Europe and became the first Western country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine for general use as it announced on Wednesday a rollout of Pfizer-BioNTech’s drug from next week.
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine could start being administered in Mexico in mid-December if it is approved by the country’s health regulator, Mexico’s foreign minister announced