Anthony Fauci tones down earlier criticism of U.K.’s Pfizer vaccine approval

The U.K. watchdog, called the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, said Wednesday that it had approved the Pfizer vaccine. That means the shot will likely be used in Britain before the U.S. and the European Union.

“They’re great, they’re good scientists,” Fauci said in an interview with CBS News, according to a transcript. “But they just took the data from the Pfizer company and instead of scrutinizing it really, really carefully [t]hey said, ‘OK, let’s approve it. That’s it.’”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been under fire from President Donald Trump because no COVID vaccines were approved before the election in which he was defeated by President-elect Joe Biden. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and other health officials have said that a careful, transparent approval process is key to ensuring public trust in the vaccine that will be required for a successful immunization campaign.

The U.K. “kind of ran around the corner of the marathon and joined it in the last mile,” Fauci told CBS. “They really rushed through that approval.”

Fauci later attempted to clarify his comments.

“Our process is one that takes more time than it takes in the U.K.,” Fauci told the BBC, according to a report in the Washington Post. “That’s just the reality. I did not mean to imply any sloppiness even though it came out that way.”

The U.K. Department for Health and Social Care tweeted a clip late on Thursday of MHRA Chief Executive Officer June Raine defending the regulator’s methods by saying a “rolling review” process had enabled it to act quickly to approve the vaccine.

“A rolling review can be used to complete the assessment of a promising medicine or a vaccine in a situation where time is of the essence, in the shortest time possible,” she said. “But, and this is a very important point indeed, that doesn’t mean that any corners have been cut. None, at all.”