White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to submit his resignation if the agency doesn t clear Pfizer s coronavirus vaccine for emergency use by the end of the day Friday, according to multiple reports.
The warning led the FDA to accelerate its timetable for clearing America s first Covid-19 vaccine from Saturday morning to later Friday, according to the Washington Post, which cited anonymous sources. This is an untrue representation of the phone call with the Chief of Staff, Hahn told CNBC in a statement. The FDA was encouraged to continue working expeditiously on Pfizer-BioNTech s EUA request. FDA is committed to issuing this authorization quickly, as we noted in our statement this morning.