Coronavirus Latest: Tuesday, September 29

According to a report from Bloomberg, a group of 60 scientists have recommended that Pfizer withhold its vaccine until November for safety and efficacy. Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins The Final Round to discuss the latest on the coronavirus.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: Let's turn our attention now to everything going on with the coronavirus vaccine, and some news today, that Pfizer might be encouraged to delay its process to seek approval for an additional trial here. Anjalee Khemlani joins us now with the latest on this. Anjalee.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Thanks, Myles. So Pfizer did get that letter based on a couple reports of that encourages it to basically use an extra month to observe the recipients of their vaccine, and that's something that we saw as really an extension that the FDA was also considering looking into, and would push out any approvals or anything like that for at least another month into sort of that Thanksgiving timeframe.

And of course, that's something that we know has been on the table, the idea, with polls showing that they're lacking confidence, Americans lack confidence in these candidates. And what does that translate to then for these companies who are trying to put their vaccines out on the market, even if it is highly prioritized for high risk individuals?

So all of that put together, definitely haven't heard much just yet on what the companies are willing to do. Obviously, there's the undertones of if it gets pushed out an extra month, that means it's past election day, as opposed to getting some sort of results or indication of the vaccine's effectiveness by the end of October in time for election day, which is what Pfizer had been eyeing. And it is the furthest along in this vaccine race. So waiting to see more on that.

But also, as we know, the need for that is just so much more right now, with the unfortunate number of a million deaths being passed this past weekend or yesterday. Really sets the tone right now for what we're looking at when it comes to just being able to curb this outbreak and what the outlook looks like for the coming months.