Lately, I've been thinking about how certain terms from the pandemic are just part of

our vocabulary now.

Words and phrases that were utterly unfamiliar to us in 2019.

Super spreader, social distancing, PPE, and one of those for me is emergency use authorization

or EUA.

You know, I realized that I, as a reporter, have been using the term emergency use authorization

and EUA a lot since December, and yet at the same time, I'm not sure I could actually

define what it means.

Can you define it?

So, emergency use authorization is something that came about in 2005, so it's relatively

recent to the history of drugs and regulation.

Sarah Overmal is not new to the term.

She covers healthcare for Politico.

Right now, she's mostly focused on COVID and vaccines.

It came about for an anthrax vaccine that the armed services needed because of biological

threats and has been used since then for desperately needed vaccines or treatments for things like

Ebola, for other viruses, and most recently, the coronavirus.

The three coronavirus vaccines that are on the market in the US now, Pfizer, Moderna, and

Johnson, also known as J&J, all got emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.

The whole point of an emergency use authorization is that you can get something to market fast,

even if there are some lingering questions about who it is best for.

As long as the benefits outweigh the risks.

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