Ten months and 20 days after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency authorization to a vaccine that data shows is highly effective at preventing a disease that has killed nearly 300,000 Americans.
The vaccine, from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, was developed at a historically swift pace, besting early estimates that projected it would be a year or more before a COVID-19 vaccine would be authorized.
Cutting-edge science and extraordinary funding helped compress that timeline, leading to a vaccine believed to be more than 90% effective in blocking the symptoms of COVID-19 and that has shown no major, unexpected safety problems.