Food and Drug Administration

The Food and Drug Administration has been without a permanent leader since President Biden took office in January. Califf led the agency during the last year of the Obama administration.

Agency officials said reducing the number of doses creates a potential for harm in patients because "they may assume that they are fully protected when they are not" and may "take unnecessary risks."

The FDA greenlights the biotech firm's vaccine for emergency use in the U.S. The move bolsters a vast inoculation effort that's already underway.

Gov. Ron DeSantis also directed 21,450 doses be sent to the Florida Department of Health to help at long-term care facilities.

Gov. DeSantis said he thought HHS, which signed an agreement with Pfizer, would allocate based on states’ so-called at-risk populations. Instead, he said the feds “basically did it on a population basis.”

More than half - 97,500 doses - will be sent to five hospitals to be administered to high-contact and high-exposure health care personnel, the governor said.

An FDA advisory panel meets to discuss emergency use approval of the coronavirus vaccine.

The drug is a combo of two antibodies to enhance the chances it will prove effective. It's an experimental medicine that President Trump was given when he was sickened last month.

The Lucira COVID-19 All-In-One Test Kit is expected to provide results in 30 minutes or less. Its approval could help alleviate the strain on the nation's precarious coronavirus testing system.

The president-elect. who made the pandemic a linchpin of his campaign, now has the urgent job of filling top health care positions in his administration to oversee the rollout of several coronavirus vaccines.