FDA advisers recommend the first Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in the US

An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration has voted 17 to 4, with 1 abstention, to recommend emergency use authorization to the first vaccine for Covid-19 in the United States.

The highly anticipated vote means health workers facing high exposure to the disease and residents of long-term care facilities could start receiving the first doses of the two-dose vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, within days. The first 6.4 million doses could be ready to ship as soon as Friday.

The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee held the vote Thursday after an all-day public meeting to consider the emergency use authorization request (EUA) for Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate. The committee specifically voted on whether the benefits of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine outweigh the risks in people aged 16 years and older.

That a vaccine for a disease only discovered late last year would be ready so quickly is already an unmatched scientific feat, but the fact that it’s also based on a new technology that yielded 95 percent efficacy in preventing disease makes the announcement all the more remarkable.

“We will take what we have heard today into consideration when deciding not only the EUA issuance here but also how to move forward on the end licensure of this product,” said Marion Gruber, director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at the FDA.