Washington [US]: A key advisory panel of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that it has unanimously endorsed the full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for Americans aged 16 and older. “The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is recommended for people 16 years of age and older under FDA’s Biologics License Application (BLA) Approval,” the panel, which voted earlier to endorse the vaccine for the age group, said in an announcement on Tuesday. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave full approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine a week earlier. The approval, which marks the first full endorsement for a COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, has kicked off a wave of vaccine mandates by private employers and schools across the United States. The panel’s endorsement to allow individuals 16-year-old and above to receive the vaccine came as the US Education Department opened on Monday a civil probe against five US states that have barred face mask mandates in schools. More than half of the US population has received at least one dose each of a COVID vaccination, prompting Biden to call the recent resurgence of coronavirus cases in the country as “the pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
