Coronavirus Watch: Committee to vote on authorizing Pfizer vaccine

Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine candidate is poised to become the first to earn Food and Drug Administration emergency authorization, possibly as soon as today.

The 17-member independent Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is meeting now to review and discuss data from Pfizer and German startup BioNTech on their vaccine, then vote on whether the FDA should authorize it. The daylong meeting is being live-streamed, and you can tune in here.

The companies are requesting an "emergency use authorization," shy of a full approval. While they have compiled as much short-term safety and effectiveness data as is typical with any vaccine, the process has been compressed. But corners, FDA says, have not been cut.

It's Thursday, and this is the Coronavirus Watch from the Paste BN Network. Here's more news that you need to know.

• Not all health care workers want to be first in line to receive the vaccine. Only one-third of a panel of 13,000 nurses said they would voluntarily take a vaccine, another third said they wouldn’t and the rest said they were unsure, according to a late October survey by the American Nurses Association.
• Canada authorized Pfizer's vaccine Wednesday "after a thorough, independent review." The vaccine is already being rolled out across Britain.
• The number of people applying for unemployment aid jumped last week to 853,000, the most since September, evidence that companies are cutting more jobs as new virus cases spiral higher.
• A CDC scientist told a House committee that she was ordered to destroy an email regarding attempts by political appointees to interfere with the publication of weekly CDC reports.
• The European Union agency responsible for approving vaccines said it has been the subject of a cyberattack. The European Medicines Agency said it "swiftly launched an investigation" but provided no details.
• A Wyoming Department of Health doctor who told audiences at an event last month that COVID-19 was created by Russia and China to spread communism has resigned from the state agency.

Today's numbers: The U.S. has reported over 15 million cases and over 290,000 deaths. Globally, there have been over 69.2 million cases and 1.5 million fatalities. See the numbers in your area here, and check out where cases are rising here.

Some context: The U.S. reported 3,124 COVID-19 deaths Wednesday, a single-day toll worse than 9/11. Over the past seven days, the U.S. has reported 15,927 deaths – equivalent to 95 per hour, or one death every 38 seconds – breaking a record set in April. At the current pace, the U.S. death toll from the entire pandemic could reach 300,000 in just a few days.

What do you want to know about the vaccine? We're taking your vaccine questions through this online form, and we'll answer them here. We'll also be answering your questions live in our Coronavirus Watch Facebook group today 3-4 p.m. EST. You asked: What happens if someone misses the deadline for their second vaccine dose by a day, a week or even longer?

Moncef Slaoui, co-leader of Operation Warp Speed, the federal government's vaccine development effort, says that from a scientific perspective, such precision is not that important and the immune system generally responds better when there's a wider gap between vaccinations.

But during a pandemic, when the risk of infection is high, he noted that people are better off getting the second shot – and being fully protected – according to the authorized schedule. "If there is significant transmission of disease, as is the case here, we should absolutely get the second dose exactly as has been studied," he said. Read more.

– Grace Hauck, Paste BN breaking news reporter, @grace_hauck