Trumps Top Medical Advisor Apologises for ‘misunderstanding’ after Blistering Attack on ‘Rushed’ Covid Vaccine Approval

Trumps Top Medical Advisor, Dr Fauci, apologises for ‘misunderstanding’ after Launching a Blistering Attack on UK’s ‘Rushed’ Covid Vaccine Approval.

Dr Anthony Fauci said he has “great faith” in the UK’s scientists and regulators, as he “set the record straight” on comments which seemed to suggest the UK had rushed through its approval of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine. America’s top infectious diseases expert said he did “not mean to imply any sloppiness, even though it came out that way”.

Dr Fauci had said UK health authorities did not scrutinise vaccine trial data as “carefully” as US officials have been doing, after the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) approved Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine on Tuesday, making Britain the first western country to green-light the injection. When asked “how qualified” he was to judge the work of the MHRA, Dr Fauci told the BBC: “There really has been a misunderstanding and for that I am sorry and I apologise for that. I do have great faith in both the scientific community and regulatory community in the UK.”

The director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had suggested that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is conducting a more rigorous review of the jab. “The way the FDA is doing it is the correct way. We really scrutinise the data very carefully to guarantee to the American public that this is a safe and efficacious vaccine,” he said. He added: “We have the gold standard of a regulatory approach with the FDA. The UK did not do it as carefully and they got a couple of days ahead.”

Speaking to the BBC on Wednesday evening, Dr Fauci said: “I want to set the record straight. I have a great deal of confidence in what the UK does, both scientifically and from a regulatory standpoint.” If the US had approved the vaccine as quickly as the UK did, there would likely have been “push back on an already scrutinising society”, he said.

Explaining previous comments, he said: “In the United States, there is such a considerable amount of tension of pushing back on the credibility, of the safety and the efficacy.