There are two federal holidays, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, in November, making it a crazy month. Lots of Agency staff take vacation around the two holidays, and Thanksgiving week is particularly laden with staff vacation days, which is little surprise as it is one of the busiest travel times for everyone in the U.S.
Despite this, the first fourteen days of November have been a productive time for the OGD. The FDA daily approval page, as of today, lists 26 full approval actions and 15 tentative approval actions for a total of 41 thus far this month, and there could be some stragglers that have not yet posted as of the writing of this blog. If this pace continues, we may see about 80+ approval actions by the end of the month, a number we haven’t seen in the last four months. This is a good sign heading into the second half of November, before turkey time hits.
