Covid-19 Vaccinations Could Start ‘Monday Or Tuesday’ As FDA Set To Approve Pfizer Vaccine, HHS Chief Says

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TOPLINE

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is “rapidly” proceeding toward authorizing Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine and vaccinations could begin by early next week, Health Secretary Alex Azar predicted Friday, after the shot cleared a key hurdle Thursday when an advisory panel endorsed the vaccine.

KEY FACTS

The FDA has told Pfizer “that it will rapidly work toward finalization and issuance of an emergency use authorization,” FDA Director Stephen Hahn and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research director Peter Marks said in a statement Friday

Azar told Good Morning America Friday that the authorization should be coming “in the next couple of days,” as the government “work[s] to negotiate with Pfizer” and determines “the information doctors need to prescribe it appropriately.”

“We could be seeing people getting vaccinated Monday, Tuesday of next week,” Azar said, saying the government was doing “really just the last dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s” before it authorizes the vaccine.

Once the vaccine rolls out, Azar said Friday there could be 20 million vaccinations “just in the coming weeks,” with “up to 50 million total by the end of January” and 100 million by the end of February.

BIG NUMBER

2.9 million. That’s the number of doses in the first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that will go out to all 50 states once the vaccine is approved, Good Morning America reported Friday. The company believes it will be able to ship out the entire first batch within 24 hours of the vaccine being authorized.

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