5 things to know about the Pfizer covid vaccine approval

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued its full approval of the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine Monday.

The move comes eight months after the Pfizer vaccine was authorized for emergency use in the United States.

Infectious disease experts hope the full approval will inspire those wary of the vaccine to now get fully vaccinated.

The Tribune-Review spoke with Pittsburgh-based infectious disease expert Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, about this development. Here are his takeaways.

Question: How significant is this?

Answer: This is very significant because we know from the beginning that there were vaccine-hesitant people who were waiting for full FDA approval to get vaccinated. We also know that there were many companies and organizations that were waiting for full FDA authorization in order to mandate the vaccine as a condition of employment. So, this is significant and hopefully will increase the rate of vaccination. It also takes away one of the false talking points that the anti-vaccine groups have been using calling this, falsely, an experimental vaccine. So, this is good news all around. It’s something I think should have happened earlier.

Q: How soon for the Moderna vaccine to be approved?

A: Moderna is on a different timeline because the FDA requires a certain period of observation after vaccination from the clinical trials. So, (full approval) is likely to come within a month or so, although it could go faster.

Q: Will this pave the way for employers to mandate covid vaccines?

A: I hope it does. Employers have been doing it even before this and rightly so. Now they have much more support to do so because it has full FDA licensure. There’s less reticence, hopefully, among human resource managers to do this. And hopefully we’ll see a lot of employers organizations say that vaccinations for those above 16 should be something that’s required to be employed. It makes your workplace safer. It makes your workplace more resilient and it will increase vaccination rates and help us get control of this pandemic faster.

Q: What does this mean for kids under 12?

A: The more people that are vaccinated, the safer it is for children under 12. Children under 12 are generally spared the severe consequences of covid-19. Surely, the more people that are vaccinated, the safer people under the age of 12 will be.

Q: Can this be something that will be marketed? Will it cost money to get a Pfizer vaccine now?

A: This is something that will likely be marketed. I don’t think there’s going to be any change in the payment at this point. The government is still likely going to reimburse insurance companies for the cost of administering the vaccine and doctors for administering the vaccines based on what’s been put in place. But this is something that can now be marketed. Hopefully, we’ll start to see this at doctor’s offices, we’ll start to see it in more places where it can be done in a more commercial manner rather than having the states being the ones to allocate the vaccine to certain places.