08/25/2022

House Panel Finds Former Administration Sought to Pressure FDA on COVID Vaccines, Treatment

The report offers fresh details about how this rattled agency officials

Trump officials repeatedly stalled the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) plan to extend safety studies of coronavirus vaccines in fall 2020, as President Donald Trump pressed the agency for a faster timeline so the vaccines could be authorized before Election Day, according to emails, text messages and interviews conducted by a congressional panel probing the pandemic response.

White House officials such as trade adviser Peter Navarro and outside allies, such as TV host and physician Mehmet Oz, also pressed federal officials in 2020 to authorize the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment, with Navarro and a deputy working behind the scenes to have a hospital craft a request to the FDA for widespread access to the debunked therapy touted by Trump, the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis concluded in a report released Wednesday.

The report offers new details to the contemporaneous reports about the Trump White House's efforts to sway the FDA in the first year of the pandemic, a pressure campaign that rattled agency officials and threatened to undermine confidence in vaccines and other medical treatments, former commissioner Stephen Hahn told the panel.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.