Dr. Peter Marks, FDA: Introduction of first booster saved hundreds of thousands of lives

These boosters were authorized just before we had an increasing number of deaths starting to run into the thousand per day in the United States. And there was great urgency to think what we can do to try to reduce that number of deaths. It had become clear that immunity was waning and that potentially giving a booster could restore immunity and decrease the number of deaths. So we moved with all do haste not because of any kind of external pressure, but because of internal pressure. We felt compelled to try to save American lives because thousands of people were dying. And as somebody who was one of the architects of Operation Warp Speed had a pretty good idea about how to find efficiencies to move forward. It was critical to move as fast as we could and by the way, the data that has now been published showed that introduction of that first booster was probably responsible for saving hundreds of thousands of lives as we entered the Delta and Omicron waves.