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EU regulator grants conditional approval to Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine

21 December 2020
 Dan Ackermann

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Monday recommended approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Why it matters: The milestone means the vaccine is just a step away from being distributed to millions of people in the European Union's 27 countries.

  • The vaccine has been found to be 95% effective with no serious side effects.
  • The European Commission will likely grant marketing authorization over the next 48 hours, paving the way for vaccinations to begin in most European countries over the next few days.

Between the lines: The EMA said there is no evidence to suggest that the vaccine will not be effective against the new coronavirus variant found in the U.K..

The big picture: The U.S. and U.K. have both already begun to roll out the vaccine, after it was approved by regulators in the respective countries earlier this month.

  • Those authorizations put pressure on the EU to move faster, after the bureaucratic bloc was criticized for acting slowly as thousands of people died of COVID-19 each day.
  • The EMA subsequently pushed its date forward for making the decision, moving it to Monday from Dec. 29.
  • The agency will make a decision on Moderna's vaccine on Jan. 6.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.