Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P].
The United Kingdom granted emergency approval Wednesday to Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, making it the first Western country to allow mass vaccination against the disease, which has killed more than 1.487 million people worldwide.
"Help is on the way," Health Secretary Matt Hancock said this morning, after UK regulators granted emergency authorisation for the vaccine, manufactured by the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stressed via his Twitter account that the approval of a vaccine is a big step towards normality, but the rules in the country area have not changed and restrictions must be followed to protect others.
"Until the vaccine is fully implemented, our plan depends on all of us continuing to make the necessary sacrifices to protect those we love," he added.
According to CNN, the United Kingdom ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine, so next week 800,000 initial doses would be delivered from Pfizer's facilities in Belgium, and a few million more before the end of the year.
Thus, older people living in residential homes, frontline health workers and other vulnerable people would be at the top of the priority list for vaccination.
According to the final analysis of the phase 3 trial, which Pfizer published last month, the vaccine was 95 percent effective in preventing the disease, even in older adults, and caused no serious safety problems.
At the time, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the study results marked an important step in the historic eight-month journey "to deliver a vaccine that can help end this devastating pandemic".
For this reason, he said, marketing authorization would be requested "in a few days" from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), since with thousands of people infected every day around the world, "we urgently need to bring a safe and effective vaccine to the world.
Notably, the announcement means the U.K. has overtaken the U.S. and the European Union in the race to approve a vaccine, a decision that comes with a vaccination campaign unprecedented in modern medicine, including an information crusade about the benefits of vaccines.
This development may also intensify pressure on U.S. regulators, who are being criticized by the White House for not moving faster to get the doses to people.
According to U.S. regulators, they were falling behind in recent days because they are virtually on their own to pore over thousands of pages of raw data on vaccine trials before they reach approval.
Instead of accepting the findings of studies shown by vaccine manufacturers, U.S. regulators have to validate the results themselves.
