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The European Commission has approved the use of the Modern Covid-19 vaccine in the European Union, the last necessary step to allow its use throughout the continent.
It comes after the European Medicines Agency approved the Moderna vaccine for use today.
It is the second vaccine for the new coronavirus to receive approval from the European drug regulator, after the Pfizer / BioNtech vaccine, which was approved last month.
The news was welcomed by Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, who said the vaccine would allow 10,000 more people to be vaccinated in Ireland a week.
Good news. Once delivered, it should allow us to increase the number of people we vaccinate by an additional 10k per week https://t.co/PaCOY9yile
– Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) January 6, 2021
“The EMA recommended granting a conditional marketing authorization for the Covid-19 Vaccine Moderna vaccine to prevent 2019 coronavirus disease in people aged 18 and over,” the Amsterdam-based regulator said in a statement.
“This vaccine provides us with another tool to overcome the current emergency,” EMA Executive Director Emer Cooke said in a statement.
“It is a testament to the efforts and commitment of all involved that we have this second positive vaccine recommendation just under a year since the WHO declared the pandemic,” he added.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, posting a video on Twitter, said that Ireland had reserved 875,000 of the Moderna vaccine and 3.3 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
“Hopefully we will have more good news about the Astraveneca vaccine soon and more are in the works.
“Between now and the end of February, we should receive about 40,000 Pfizer vaccines per week.
“The delivery and logistics for Moderna are now being finalized. When we have a clear delivery schedule, that will allow us to expand and increase the number of vaccines we administer each week.”
Donnelly added: “This week we will be moving to 25 residential care centers and all hospital groups. By the end of the week, the HSE intends to have administered 49,950 vaccinations to nursing home residents and healthcare professionals.” .
The head of the European Council, Charles Michel, said that delivering vaccines to the almost 450 million people in the EU was a “gigantic challenge”.
However, he insisted that “together with member states, the European Commission is working around the clock to ensure that we can increase the number of vaccines available,” while “respecting the independence of the drug agency.”
In a clinical trial of 30,400 people, it was found that the US-based Moderna jab.
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Good news for our efforts to bring more # COVID-19 vaccines to Europeans!
@EMA_News evaluated that the @moderna_tx the vaccine is safe and effective.We are now working at full speed to pass it and make it available in the EU.
– Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) January 6, 2021
The Dutch national drug authority CBG has said that the Moderna vaccine is also expected to be effective against the new coronavirus variant detected in Britain.
With the UK and the US each pushing through the emergency authorization of two vaccines, the EMA had been under pressure to speed up its regulatory process, especially from Germany.
EU countries started getting vaccinated on December 27 with the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine, but progress has been much slower than in the US, Britain or Israel.
While the US, Britain and Israel have already administered vaccines to more than a million of their citizens, the EU countries have lagged far behind.
Last week, the EMA said the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford is unlikely to get the green light in the EU in the next month.
The spokesperson for the European Commission on Public Health and Food Safety has said that it does not believe that the European roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines has been slow due to the EMA’s assessment.
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Stefan de Keersmaecker said that European citizens need to know that the vaccine they are receiving is safe.
The EMA is an independent agency that is doing “an extremely thorough and in-depth review of all these vaccine candidates,” he said.
“We want to be absolutely sure of the efficacy and safety of these vaccines. We feel it is very important not only for the safety itself, but also to convince European citizens that their affected procurement is really safe.”
He said the EMA has sped up the procedure, beginning the evaluation of these candidate vaccines before the company has submitted applications for its vaccines to be put on the market for ongoing review.
Mr de Keersmaecker said the European Commission has offered financial support to vaccine manufacturers to ensure that delivery, once they have been given the green light, “can be done very quickly and very quickly.”
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