After the Food and Drug Administration offered shaky data to justify its approval of blood plasma to treat COVID-19, some scientists are worried the agency could bow to pressure to approve a coronavirus vaccine before it's fully tested.
On Sunday, President Donald Trump announced that the FDA had issued an Emergency Use Authorization for blood plasma. The president, the Health and Human Services secretary and the head of the FDA all said the treatment reduced deaths in COVID-19 patients by 35%.
It did not, and scientists immediately questioned the FDA’s claims about the data.
“You saw FDA be bullied by the president of the United States into approving something that they didn’t want to approve earlier, because he wanted them to do that,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, in an online interview Monday with the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.