On Dec. 12, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to BNT162b2, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer(NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech(NASDAQ:BNTX) after a positive recommendation from an advisory committee. This U.S. EUA followed similar moves made by the governments of Canada and the United Kingdom. In this Motley Fool Live video recorded on Dec. 11, healthcare and cannabis bureau chief Corinne Cardina and Fool.com writer Keith Speights discuss whether or not the U.K. and Canadian authorizations put pressure on the U.S. to follow suit with its own authorization of BNT162b2.

Corrine Cardina: Let's take a quick step back and look at the other authorization news that happened since we last spoke. Health Canada authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine candidate, actually, while we were doing last week's segment together. This was after the UK make the same decision. Do you think that these two countries' decisions put a little bit of pressure on the FDA panel to green light this vaccine?

Keith Speights: Yes and no.

I think everyone has the pressure to try to get a vaccine made available to Americans. I'm sure that the members of this committee did feel to some extent some pressure.

I also said no, and that I don't think that the decisions by Canada and the UK really influenced the actual decision by these members of the panel. These are medical experts. They are going to base the decision based on what they see in the data. I think that's exactly what they did. So maybe there was a little pressure, but I don't think it was anything that ultimately would have swayed which decision they made.