The FDA has approved Pfizer and BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine for emergency use. This means launching a mass vaccine campaign in the US, which will only be held back by the physical presence of the vaccine and its difficult logistics.

Peter Marks

Head of the FDA Center for Biological Research and Testing

“The safety and efficacy data have allowed us to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on the basis that its known and expected benefits clearly outweigh the known and expected risks.”

A new type of vaccine (based on messenger RNA) was created in record time: development started in March, and already in October it showed 95% effectiveness according to the results of the third phase of clinical trials.

Mass vaccination with Pfizer will be limited to developed countries, primarily the United States, but it will not be the only one there. The reason is not only the shortage and high cost ($39 for two doses), but also the need for a continuous low-temperature (minus 70 degrees) supply chain. So far, it has not been debugged even in the USA.

US President Donald Trump, calling the vaccine a "medical miracle", announced that mass vaccination would begin a day after FDA approval. What does this mean in a practical sense, says Reuters. The 2.9 million doses generated to date will be distributed over several days to US states, major medical centers and cities, as well as five federal agencies. Health care workers and older people with chronic diseases will be vaccinated first, and key workers and people over 65 will be vaccinated second.

By the end of the year, Pfizer is to produce 50 million doses, half of which will go to the United States. By mid-2021, this country should be the first to provide access to one of the vaccines to all of its more than 300 million citizens.

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Russians will be vaccinated with the domestic COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V. But the pharmaceutical industry has yet to master its large-scale production. Vladimir Putin instructed to start mass vaccination in December, but why this is unlikely to succeed - read in our mailing list .

About what drugs Russians will be vaccinated with and why Western vaccines will not appear in our country soon, we talked in more detail here .