Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'Useless And Unfortunate': Final-Hour White House Pressure On FDA Reported
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn on Sunday denied reports his agency was pressured by the Trump administration to get Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine authorized quickly, asserting authorization was based on a "thorough review of the science and data." "Our timeline, how we approached this was based upon our thorough review of the science and data," Hahn said on CNN's "State on the Union." "That's the promise we made to the American people, the transparency around that, and that's what we did.鈥 (Carrasco, 12/13)
Moncef Slaoui of Operation Warp Speed was asked on 鈥淔ox News Sunday鈥 about reports the U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief was told Friday his job was in jeopardy if the agency didn鈥檛 approve the first Covid vaccine by day鈥檚 end. If a phone call along those lines between Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and FDA Administrator Stephen Hahn happened as reported, 鈥淚 think it was useless and unfortunate, and so are some of the tweets,鈥 he said. (Czuczka and Miller, 12/13)
President Trump鈥檚 recent attempts to speed up the Food and Drug Administration鈥檚 approval of the coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, which reportedly went as far as threatening the FDA commissioner鈥檚 job, were brushed aside by high-ranking health officials on Sunday who decried the additional pressure as useless and potentially counter-productive.聽 鈥淚 do think it鈥檚 not helpful,鈥 Moncef Slaoui, the head of the White House鈥檚 program to accelerate the development of a Covid-19 vaccine, told Fox News Sunday in response to a question about President Trump鈥檚 tweet last week telling the FDA to 鈥済et the [damn] vaccine out NOW鈥 and The Washington Post鈥檚 report that Chief of Staff Mark Meadows threatened Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn. (McEvoy, 12/13)
As the first United States shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine set out across a beleaguered nation ravaged by nine months of illness and death, the leader of the agency responsible for authorizing the immunization for emergency use, maintained Sunday that the authorization was made as quickly as possible, despite claims to the contrary by President Donald Trump. "We do not feel that this could have been out a week earlier," Dr. Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner, countered on ABC's "This Week." "We went through our process. We promised the American people that we would do a thorough review of the application and that's what we did. We followed our process." (Kelsey, 12/13)
