[ad_1]
View of Oxford University / AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine boxes at Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, Great Britain, January 2, 2021.
Gareth Fuller | Reuters
LONDON – AstraZeneca’s covid-19 vaccine could be available throughout the European Union by mid-February, an EU official said on Tuesday, after the pharmaceutical company requested approval for distribution in the 27-member bloc.
The European Medicines Agency announced Tuesday that it is now studying the results of the AstraZeneca vaccine and the University of Oxford on an “accelerated schedule” and could issue its opinion on January 29. This jab has been rolling out in the UK since early January.
“If we had a successful authorization for the AstraZeneca contract … we hope that two weeks after that authorization, AstraZeneca will be able to make the first delivery,” said Sandra Gallina, director general of health and food safety at the European Commission. legislators Tuesday morning.
“And they are thinking that I would say two deliveries a month, but all this is in process, they need to discuss this with the member states,” he added.
The EU has a contract with AstraZeneca to buy up to 400 million doses of its vaccine. One of its benefits is that it can be stored in normal refrigerators rather than extremely low temperatures like some of its competitors. However, this jab has also come under fire after manufacturers admitted a bug in late November, which was later fixed.
This would be the third approval of a vaccine in the EU to contain the pandemic. The bloc has been vaccinating citizens with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine since late December and the Moderna vaccine received the green light for distribution last week.
Gallina told lawmakers that Moderna’s first coups began to be distributed in member states on Monday.
We bought as much as we were offered.
Sandra Gallina
director general of the European Commission
However, the European Commission has been blamed for what critics describe as a slow rollout of coronavirus vaccines. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin sent a letter to the commission on Monday urging the institution to speed up the distribution of the vaccines.
“The debate over why we don’t buy more puzzles me again,” said Gallina, who has been the main negotiator with drug companies.
“We bought as much as they offered us,” he explained.
“Not only quantities are negotiated, a specific quantity is negotiated for that moment so that we have all the quantities that can be produced,” Gallina added.
The speed of vaccination has differed in the 27 countries, in part due to bureaucracy and the lack of preparedness of some governments.
According to Gallina, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control will provide figures on how many citizens have been vaccinated across the EU twice a week starting next week.
AstraZeneca shares fell in early trading in Europe.
