The US gave full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine Monday, opening the door to more universities, local governments, and companies to make the vaccines mandatory and potentially increasing public confidence in the shots.
The Pentagon announced that it will press ahead with plans to mandate vaccination for members of the military amid the fight against the more contagious delta variant. The University of Minnesota also said that it will require students to be vaccinated, as did Louisiana’s major public universities despite broad exemptions allowed by state law.
Over 200 million Pfizer doses have been administered in the US under emergency provisions, with hundreds of millions more being administered worldwide since December. The Food and Drug Administration cited the wealth of real-world evidence over the past few months to move a step further and grant full approval, stressing that serious side effects are extremely rare.
