There are serious signs the Food and Drug Administration is getting cold feet over the notion of issuing emergency use authorizations to allow for the widespread early deployment of Covid-19 vaccines.
Instead, it appears the agency may be exploring the idea of using expanded access — a more limited program that is typically used for investigational drugs — in the early days of Covid vaccine rollouts.
Whereas a few weeks ago the agency’s concern was to protect against the possibility that unproven vaccines would be pushed out prematurely due to pressure from President Trump, now the fear is that early authorization of vaccines could squander a one-time chance to determine how well the various vaccines work and which work best in whom.
Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s office of vaccines research and review, put the issue on the table when members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee began to discuss a series of questions FDA staff posed at the end of a grueling day-long virtual meeting Thursday. ..
The problem stems from thorny ethical questions about whether — once a vaccine has been cleared for use by the FDA — the people who were randomly assigned to receive a placebo in its clinical trial must be informed and offered vaccine. Vaccinating the people who received placebo injections — the trial’s control arm — would end the ability to continue to compare the two groups after what would have been a short trial. ...
