Skip to Main Content

December 14, 2020
Health Law Daily

FDA Grants Emergency Use Authorization To Coronavirus Vaccine

  • December 14, 2020

The Washington Post (12/11, A1, McGinley, Johnson, Dawsey) reported that the FDA “on Friday gave emergency use authorization to the nation’s first coronavirus vaccine, launching what scientists hope will be a critical counteroffensive against a pathogen that has killed more than 290,000 Americans.”
      The Hill (12/12, Axelrod) reported that the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) “voted Saturday to recommend that the coronavirus vaccine...be administered to people age 16 and up.” In a follow-up story, The Hill (12/13, Budryk) reports that CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield “has signed off on” the “advisory panel’s recommendation.”
      The New York Times (12/12, Goodnough, Abelson, Hoffman) reported that the FDA’s “emergency authorization...of the vaccine...has set in motion the most ambitious vaccination campaign in the nation’s history, a challenge of staggering proportions choreographed against a backdrop of soaring infection rates and deaths.” According to the Times, “The first injections are expected to be given by Monday to high-risk health care workers.”
      In a separate story, the New York Times (12/13, A1, Healy, Harmon, Romero) reports, “Trucks and cargo planes packed with the first of nearly three million doses of coronavirus vaccine fanned out across the country on Sunday as hospitals rushed to set up injection sites and their anxious workers tracked each shipment hour by hour.”