-Biden promises 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days in office

-US reported record number of 3,300 Covid deaths on December 10

WASHINGTON (TIP): A panel of independent medical experts voted on Dec. 10 to recommend the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for emergency use authorization. UK and Canada have already approved the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.

President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday, December 10, welcomed the  news that a regulatory panel endorsed Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, calling the development a “bright light in a needlessly dark time.”

The group of independent advisers recommended that the Food and Drug Administration grant emergency use authorization for the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech. Although agency approval has not yet been handed down, Biden’s statement inaccurately characterized the panel vote as “approval by the Food & Drug Administration.” A later version corrected that misstatement.

Biden also repeated a plan of the incoming administration to scale up the manufacturing and distribution of the vaccine, assuring 100 million shots are dispersed in the first 100 days in office. He thanked those behind the efforts to create a vaccine for the virus, while taking aim at the outgoing Trump administration because “it didn’t have to be this bad.”

“We are grateful to the scientists and researchers who developed this vaccine. And, we are grateful to the scientists and public health experts who evaluated the safety and efficacy of this vaccine free from political influence. The integrity of science led us to this point,” Biden said in the statement.

Meanwhile, for the second day in a row, the United States has reported a record number of covid-19 deaths, topping even the worst days of the spring surge.

The back-to-back records are dark reminders that, even as vaccines appear to hurtle toward approval, the country is still far from the pandemic’s end. By Thursday, December 10  evening, the daily U.S. toll topped 3,300. The country recorded 3,140 deaths Wednesday, December 9. States in the South and the Midwest, along with California, are contributing most to the increase.

The steadily rising fatality numbers also come after weeks of soaring levels of infection and coronavirus patients in need of hospitalization. Public health experts anticipate that the country will soon exceed the week’s death milestones nearly every day in the coming two to three months.

(Source: Agencies)