FDA vaccine chief overruled scientists on Covid shot access, NY Times reports

The FDA’s vaccine chief overruled staff scientists who favor widespread access to Covid shots, according to memos released in recent days by the FDA, The New York Times’ Christina Jewett reports. While agency staff members concluded that the FDA should allow a wide range of age groups to receive the vaccines, citing high hospitalization rates among young children with Covid and saying that the virus’s evolution is “complex and remains unpredictable,” Dr. Vinay Prasad, the agency official in charge of vaccines and gene therapies at the FDA., disagreed, overriding those scientists and deciding to issue very narrow eligibility limits. The agency last week said that no one under 65 was eligible to receive the Covid vaccines made by Moderna (MRNA) or Pfizer (PFE) unless they had underlying medical conditions that put them at risk for severe disease.