A senior Pfizer executive testifying before the European Union Parliament on Monday stated that the pharmaceutical company did not know whether its COVID-19 mRNA vaccine would stop virus transmission before it entered the market.
Janine Small, Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, was filling in for CEO Albert Bourla. He had been called to testify about how secretive vaccine deals were struck with the EU but unilaterally pulled out of the commitment.
Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Rob Roos of the Netherlands asked Small directly, “Was the Pfizer Covid vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market?”
Small responded, “Regarding the question around, um, did we know about stopping the immunization (sic) before it entered the market? No, these, um, you know, we had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market, and from that point of view, we had to do everything at risk.”
Roos called Small’s comments “scandalous” and “shocking, even criminal” in a video the MEP posted to Twitter. In the video, he lambasted the EU’s digital COVID-19 “passport” and the consequent “discrimination” allegedly faced by unvaccinated EU citizens.
Small emphasized the opinion that Pfizer took a necessary risk in rushing its vaccine through development and trials, claiming that millions of lives have been saved since the initial rollout.
“[I would] hate to imagine what situation we would be in the world right now if companies like us did not take those risks, did not do clinical research and development at scale in order to make sure that we could have a vaccine that we could roll out to the world,” she stated.
Still, Pfizer and Moderna’s initial rollouts of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were plagued by mixed messages coming from pharma executives, public health officials, and politicians in Europe and the United States.
When it first issued emergency use authorization for the vaccines to enter the U.S. market in December 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made stated:
“At this time, data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of [COVID-19] from person to person.”
Still, shortly after the release of the vaccines, President Joe Biden stated at a town hall in Cincinnati, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
Not long after, in an appearance on Face the Nation, Biden’s chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, called vaccinated individuals “dead ends” for the virus, implying that the vaccine prevented transmission of COVID-19.
The administration’s messaging has since changed. Public health officials like Fauci and vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer and Moderna now claim that the vaccine mainly protects people against severe illness or death.
Recent messaging to the public is that newer iterations of the virus can easily be transmitted to and from vaccinated people.