Covid-19 roundup: FDA all but re­jects changes to au­tho­rized vac­cine plans; Is­rael ap­proves Mod­er­na's vac­cine as coun­tries race to get shots in arms

Just one day af­ter OWS chief Mon­cef Slaoui said he had pushed the FDA to con­sid­er halv­ing Mod­er­na’s Covid-19 vac­cine dos­es to coun­ter­act dis­tri­b­u­tion lags, the agency poured cold wa­ter on the no­tion Mon­day night, as well as on oth­er po­ten­tial al­ter­na­tives.

The idea of chang­ing au­tho­rized vac­cine dos­es or sched­ules for any Covid-19 vac­cine is “pre­ma­ture” and not sup­port­ed by avail­able da­ta, FDA chief Stephen Hahn and CBER di­rec­tor Pe­ter Marks said in a joint state­ment. Hahn said reg­u­la­tors have been fol­low­ing the re­cent de­bates and news re­ports about try­ing to get more peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed more quick­ly, but not­ed al­ter­ing any au­tho­rized pro­ce­dure amounts to a “sig­nif­i­cant risk” for pub­lic health.

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