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reThe corona vaccine from pharmaceutical companies Biontech and Pfizer should be available to EU citizens quickly after approval. A spokesman for the EU Commission assured it on Tuesday. The EU commissioners wanted to sign a supply contract for up to 300 million doses with the two companies at their weekly meeting on Wednesday, Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said. The necessary legal examination afterwards will take another two or three days. Once the contract is concluded, all member states could register their needs, the spokesperson said.
The European CSU politician Manfred Weber had previously said on the Phoenix television channel: “The contracts will be signed in the next few hours and then they will be legally anchored in the decisions of the Commission tomorrow.
In principle, all 27 countries have access to the first deliveries at the same time. They should be distributed according to the size of the population. Germany has a stake of about 19 percent. The spokesperson said the distribution will not be determined until the needs of all countries are known.
The EU Commission has been negotiating with Biontech and Pfizer for months; she had announced in September that she wanted to get up to 300 million doses of vaccine. A framework agreement had not yet been concluded, unlike three other vaccine manufacturers. Biontech and Pfizer announced Monday that their vaccine offered more than 90 percent protection against Covid-19. Approval initially in the United States must be requested by next week at the earliest.
Spahn expects the approval process to be quick
Germany would like to receive up to 100 million cans. Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) announced in Berlin on Tuesday that the federal government had entered the talks in the EU. Two doses of vaccine per person should be necessary for immunization.
Spahn expects a speedy approval process. As usual, not all data will be collected first and then sent to authorities after the approval study is completed. This time it runs in direct exchange.
Approval in the United States and in Europe would be done very quickly. Spahn said: “The requirements that we established … have not been reduced or changed in any way.” As an attractive pharmaceutical market, Germany, like other large EU states, could have entered into a contract only with companies, Spahn said. But with France, Italy and the Netherlands there was very strong publicity that the Commission should do this for all EU countries. Otherwise, the smaller states would have been left behind. “It’s a little more difficult sometimes, but in the end, when we are together, we are stronger together.”
In parallel with the conclusion of the contract with Pfizer and Biontech, the EU Commission also wants to propose a legislative package for the so-called health union on Wednesday. Among other things, it wants to present a regulation on measures in the event of cross-border threats to health, with which the EU could more quickly decide to take joint measures in the event of a pandemic outbreak.
CDU MEP Peter Liese said the EU had to rely too heavily on the World Health Organization (WHO) after the corona outbreak. You have to acquire more skills in disease control. To this end, the Commission also wants to strengthen the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) and the European Medical Agency Ema.
