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FDA Plans Full Pfizer Approval by Labor Day to Help Fight Delta Variant, Says Report

The agency hopes the move will persuade vaccine holdouts to roll up their sleeves.

The Food and Drug Administration is reportedly planning to give full approval to the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine within weeks in a move that it hopes will persuade more Americans to take their shots. According to The New York Times, the FDA has set itself an accelerated deadline of Labor Day to give the shot full approval. Some 70 percent of the nation’s adults have now taken at least one COVID-19 shot, and the FDA hopes that full approval will help convince more holdouts to roll up their sleeves. It would also see vaccine mandates kick in at a lot of workplaces and institutions across the nation—for example, the city of San Francisco said last month that it will require all 35,000 of its employees to be vaccinated within 10 weeks of formal approval from the FDA. As for vaccine skeptics, some recent polling showed that three of every 10 unvaccinated people would feel more inclined to get a shot with a full approval.