- Vaccine from BioNTech SE and Pfizer receives UK approval for rollout.
- Final advice for vaccine distribution soon, rollout from next week.
- GBP/USD didn’t react to the news.
The coronavirus vaccine jointly developed by BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc has received approval today from UK’s regulator – the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, confirming its safety and effectiveness to be rolled out among the public from next week.
The UK joint committee while confirming the approval added that the final advice for the vaccine distribution would be released shortly.
The emergency approval of the vaccine put the UK as the first nation in the western world to approve mass inoculations against the deadly virus, which killed more than 1.4 million people world-over.
The fast pace set by the UK regulators to approve a vaccine developed by a US company will put pressure on the American regulators to act fast. While, Russia and China had already gone ahead with vaccine rollouts, which many experts fear are without proper large-scale efficacy tests and might pose serious risks.
The UK Health Minister Matt Hancock hailed the approval of the Pfizer vaccine as fantastic news from the regulator.
The well-anticipated news didn’t create much interest in the currency market as it has been already priced in. GBP/USD continued to trade with the mild gains for the day, around 1.3420 while S&P 500 futures clawed back earlier losses.
At the time of writing, one British Pound buys 1.3367 US dollars, down -0.32% as of 8:46 AM UTC.
