Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday criticized the United Kingdom’s recent greenlight of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, claiming “they really rushed” through the approval process.
British officials approved the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, making the UK the first Western nation with the vaccine. (RELATED:UK Approves Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine For Emergency Use)
“In all fairness to so many of my U.K. friends, they kind of ran around the corner of the marathon and joined in at the last mile,” Fauci said on “The Takeout” podcast. “I think that would be a good metaphor for it … because they really rushed through that approval.”
Fauci added the United State’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is “the gold standard of regulation. They’re doing it in a very careful way, appropriately, because if we did anything that was cutting corners and rushing, we have enough problem with people being skeptical about taking vaccine anyway.”
“If we had jumped over the hurdle here quickly and inappropriately to gain an extra week or a week-and-a-half, I think that the credibility of our regulatory process would be damaged,” he concluded. (RELATED: United Airlines Flight Carrying First Doses Of Pfizer Vaccine Arrives In Chicago As Part Of Distribution Plan)
WATCH:
VIDEO: Dr. Anthony Fauci to @MajorCBS on @TakeoutPodcast: British regulators “ran around the corner of the marathon and joined it in the last mile” in approving the @pfizer covid vaccine. “They really rushed through that approval” instead of scrutinizing the data closely. pic.twitter.com/VVtugt6fCI
— The Takeout w/ Major Garrett (@TakeoutPodcast) December 3, 2020
Since the start of the pandemic, over 60,000 people have died from the virus with approximately 1.6 million confirmed cases in the United Kingdom, according to the New York Times.