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That Was Quick! REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration News broke yesterday that the UK has approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for widespread use, becoming the first country in the world to do so. The regulator, Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has said the the jab offers 95% protection against COVID-19 and is safe. The NHS plans to begin the rollout as soon as next week. Indeed, initial batches are on the way and the army stands ready to assist. The speed surprised many, not least as the timing of the decision, on the day on which the tier system came into force, was politically convenient. Ross Clark, in the Spectator, explains how the vaccine could be approved so quickly and details some of the testing: Today’s decision has been possible thanks to the Human Medicines Regulations 2012, which allow Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to grant temporary emergency use authorisation in circumstances such as this.Even so, eyebrows have been raised at the speed of the MHRA’s decision. In a briefing this lunchtime, Berkeley Phillips, medical director of Pfizer, suggested that regulatory bodies had all the data they needed, but that the MHRA had been prepared to "read the individual chapters of a book" rather than wait for the whole book to be written. The full, published results are still ...
