FDA to Give Full Approval of Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine by September: New York Times  

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is aiming to give full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine by early September, according to The New York Times. 

The two-dose vaccine, which Pfizer developed in collaboration with German-based BioNTech, was granted emergency use authorization by the FDA last November.    It is one of just three COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. stockpile, along with the two-shot vaccine from Moderna and the single-dose version developed by Johnson & Johnson.    The newspaper says the FDA is accelerating its normal timetable to grant full approval to the two-dose vaccine as the United States undergoes a new surge of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations caused primarily by the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19.  The recent surge of new infections is mainly among people who have not gotten vaccinated. The Times quotes recent polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care research group, which found that three of every 10 unvaccinated people in the U.S. said they more likely would take a fully approved vaccine.     The surge has prompted a growing number of public and private entities to issue mandatory vaccinations for all of its employees, including an order last week by U.S. President Joe Biden for all employees of the federal government.