US expert committee votes in for emergency use of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine

An expert committee convened by the FDA voted heavily in favor of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on Thursday in recommending the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for
emergency use, bringing close the vaccine’s chances of becoming
available to public in coming days.

The final voting tally by the committee was 17 in favor,
four against and one abstention.

The committee was tasked with answering whether, “based
on the totality of scientific evidence available, do the benefits of the
Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine outweigh its risk for use in individuals 16
years of age and older?” AFP wrote.

The vote isn’t binding, but the FDA is expected to follow the
recommendation within the coming days.

The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has already been approved
for emergency use by the UK, a trend, which was followed by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Canada.

The UK began administering
the vaccine to general public on Tuesday. The undertaking was largely successful, except
two cases where the recipients had a history of allergic infection.

The incident gave rise to doubts about the vaccine’s possible side
effects to people with allergy, as it went for an FDA review.

Russian and Chinese vaccines are already being administered on a large scale, but without having completed comparable clinical trials.

The full results of the trial, which included nearly 44,000 people, were published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, another major milestone.

These confirmed the vaccine was 95 percent effective with no serious safety issues, an outcome that was described in an accompanying editorial as a “triumph.”

Pfizer scientist Kathrin Jansen told the panel this was a result of the innovative messenger RNA technology behind the vaccine, an approach that has never before been approved.

Britain on Wednesday reported that two health care workers developed significant allergic reactions to the vaccine as the country rolled out its massive drive Tuesday.

The FDA will therefore include a warning label on the vaccine if it’s approved, the agency’s Marion Gruber said.