Covid Vaccine For 16 and older: An independent committee of experts advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday afternoon recommended the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine for people 16 and older. That endorsement, which now only awaits final approval by Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., is a key signal to hospitals and individual health care providers that they should proceed to inoculate patients.

It follows Friday night’s emergency use authorization of the vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees licensing of medical products.

“Based on everything we saw from looking at the data, we’re very comfortable that the safety profile that was observed in 17- and 16-year-olds was acceptable,” Dr. Peter Marks, the F.D.A.’s top vaccine regulator, said at a news conference on Saturday.

The C.D.C. advisory committee, which typically meets three times a year to review amendments to routine schedules for child, adolescent and adult vaccines, has been engaged in numerous marathon-length sessions this fall to discuss a plethora of issues surrounding the introduction of limited supplies during a pandemic of the novel vaccine.

In meetings on Friday and Saturday, the panel’s heated discussion centered mainly on three areas: whether to recommend the vaccine for patients 16 and 17 years old, for pregnant and lactating women, and for patients who have had an anaphylactic reaction to other vaccines.

C.D.C. officials and scientists will review the debate and post more precise guidance about those specific groups and others on Sunday and throughout next week, as more information about the vaccine becomes known.

— Jan Hoffman The New York Times