FDA Fully Approves Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine

The FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) officially and fully approves the Pfizer-BioTech COVID-19 Vaccine.

The approval is expected to boost public confidence and set a wave of new vaccinations. This announcement may also instantly open the way for more universities, companies and local governments to make vaccinations mandatory.

The Pentagon promptly announced it will press ahead with plans to force members of the military to get vaccinated amid the battle against the extra-contagious delta variant. 

More than 200 million Pfizer doses have been administered in the U.S. under emergency provisions — and hundreds of millions more worldwide — since December.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla called the FDA’s action “an important milestone that I think will unlock some of the more skeptical minds.”

Moderna has also applied to the FDA for full approval of its vaccine. Johnson & Johnson, maker of the third option in the U.S., said it hopes to do so later this year.

Full approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine means it meets the same “very high standards required of all the approved vaccines we rely on every day,” said Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University, a former FDA vaccine chief.

Just over half of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated.

As the delta variant fills hospital beds, shots are on the rise again, with a million a day given Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

President Joe Biden said that for those who hesitated to get the vaccine until it received what he dubbed the “gold standard” of FDA approval, “the moment you’ve been waiting for is here.”

“Please get vaccinated today,” he said.