Coronavirus vaccines should be widely available in US by spring 2021: Azar

There should be enough coronavirus vaccines available to everyone in the United States by spring of 2021, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on Wednesday on the heels of the United Kingdom granting emergency-use authorization (EUA) to Pfizer’s vaccine.

“The British approval is just great news in the sense that for the American people, this should be very reassuring; an independent regulatory authority in another country has found this vaccine to be safe and effective for use, and, here we’re going to let the FDA run through this process,” Azar told FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.”

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Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday announced it has scheduled a meeting this month to discuss the request for EUA for a COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna Inc. Furthermore, Azar described the FDA’s process as “a very detailed approach.

“They [FDA] look under the hood, they’re going to look at all the data to make sure that it proves to be as good as it appears and we’ll have that meeting of our advisory committee on December 10th, and, hopefully, within days after that, we’ll have approval here and we should have about 6 million doses releasable of Pfizer vaccine by that point ... we make more every day.”

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Azar said that there should “enough vaccines available for everyone in the U.S.” by the “second quarter of next year.”

“It’s important to remember that every week, more and more people are going to get vaccinated and we have other vaccine candidates thanks to President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, AstraZeneca, Janssen [Pharmaceutica], other products that we hope will come online and add even more supplies as we go really on a weekly basis.”

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FOX Business' David Aaro contributed to this report.