On Monday, the 23rd of August, the Federal Food and Drug Administration, FDA, granted full approval to Pfizer’s vaccination against COVID-19 for people aged 16 and older. The move to grant Pfizer’s vaccination to have full FDA approval came amid what is, according to Our World in Data, the largest surge in coronavirus cases in the United States since February.

Despite being fully approved for people aged 16 and up. Pfizer’s vaccine remains under provisional FDA approval for use in children aged 12 to 15, as do the recently proposed third “booster” doses for individuals who received their second dose of a vaccine more than eight months ago which are intended to bring gradually falling levels of vaccine-induced immunity from COVID-19 back to sufficiently high levels to protect against the virus.

The Pfizer vaccine has been available in the United States since the end of 2020; it was the second vaccine for COVID to receive provisional approval from the FDA in December 2020 and one of only three vaccines to receive an Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA, per the CDC.

As the FDA explains, Pfizer’s vaccine is an innovative new Messenger Ribonucleic Acid (MRNA) vaccination, which works by inserting a piece of protein that matches a protein found in COVID into a receptor inside of the cell. The Center for Disease Control, CDC, says that currently, approximately 70 percent of Americans over age 12 have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine regardless of manufacturer. 

Experts disagree on the effect that full FDA approval will have on vaccine hesitancy, with some saying that it will probably inspire at least a few people to get vaccinated, with others saying that full FDA approval will likely have a negligible effect on the number of vaccinations. 

Some experts have publicly conjectured that full approval for COVID-19 vaccines might sway at least a few of the remaining vaccine-hesitant people towards getting vaccinated.

“Our hope is that by the FDA approving the vaccines, that we will in fact encourage people who were hesitant or fearful to in fact get vaccinated.” UPMC infectious disease specialist Dr. John Goldman said

 However, other experts are not so sure. In an interview with NBC News, University of Nevada, Las Vegas epidemiologist Brian Labus said, “If you don’t already trust the government, why would it matter now? If the ultimate goal in their minds is to not get vaccinated, there are a multitude of reasons they could come up with.” 

What is clear is that regardless of the effect that fully approving the Pfizer vaccine will have on vaccine hesitancy, the move to fully approve the shot will undeniably have large impacts on vaccination mandates, as many organizations have been waiting for a vaccination to receive full FDA approval before implementing a vaccine mandate. After the FDA announced that it would be giving full approval to the Pfizer shot on the 23rd of August, the Department of Defense released a memorandum on August 24th announcing that it would begin requiring that all U.S service members receive vaccinations against the coronavirus.