Pfizer has completed their Phase III clinical trials and has asked the FDA to approve emergency use of their candidate vaccine. Because this is a public health emergency, the FDA can authorize emergency use of the vaccines prior to issuing full approval of the products. You can read more about how that process works in this blog post: How Are New Vaccines and Drugs Approved?
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is meeting Thursday to review the Phase III trial data and make their recommendation to FDA Commissioner Hahn about whether to authorize emergency use if the vaccine. Here’s the Agenda for this important meeting. It starts at 7am AZ time. The voting is expected to begin at about 1pm AZ time. The meeting will be broadcast live on You Tube on this URL.
If the FDA Commissioner authorizes emergency use of the vaccine they could potentially become available for distribution within days. The county health departments have been planning for the initial roll out of the vaccine for a while now. You can read about the Maricopa County Department of Public Health’s plans in this piece in the Arizona Republic today.
The Committee meets on Thursday, December 17th on Moderna’s EUA application. Here’s the FDA’s website for that meeting.