A man wearing a face mask resting on a bench on Thursday, February 25, 2021, in Dublin, Ireland.
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LONDON – The European Union needs to be quicker in its efforts to vaccinate people against the coronavirus, said the 27 heads of state on Thursday, as the region continues to struggle with a rugged deployment.
The EU has faced problems with production, delivery and bureaucracy in rolling out Covid vaccines and has therefore struggled to keep up with the rate of inoculation seen elsewhere.
The European Commission said on Thursday that it expects about 100 million doses of vaccines to be delivered to the region by the end of the first quarter. This is expected to jump to around 500 million doses delivered by the end of June.
“We urgently need to speed up vaccine authorization, production and distribution, as well as vaccination,” said EU leaders in a joint statement.
They are particularly concerned about the new variants of Covid, which are believed to be more infectious and have already been identified in European countries. A rapid vaccination process can help protect the region’s population before the virus mutates significantly.
We observed stable and decreasing trends (infection) in 20 countries, but increasing trends in about 7 others.
Ursula von der Leyen
President of the European Commission
To this end, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is working with pharmaceutical companies in an effort to avoid further bottlenecks in the delivery process and plans to have more plants on the continent.
“Currently, 41 industrial sites contribute to the production of vaccines here in Europe, but many more could join the effort. Therefore, we are strongly encouraging cooperation between industrial actors”, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Commission, who was once doctor, said at a press conference.
It maintained its initial goal of having at least 70% of the EU’s adult population vaccinated by the end of the summer.
However, the coronavirus health emergency persists in Europe, with several countries reporting an increase in cases in the past few days.
A police officer is vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19.
Pablo Blazquez Dominguez | Getty Images News | Getty Images
On Thursday, French Prime Minister Jean Castex said the government was considering weekend blockades in Paris and other parts of France. Meanwhile, in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel warned of a potential third wave of infections if current restrictions are lifted too soon.
“We have seen steady and decreasing (infection) trends in 20 countries, but increasing trends in about 7 others,” said von der Leyen.
“At the same time, in fact, there is growing tiredness for Covid-19 among our citizens,” she noted, after about a year of strict social restrictions across the block.
Containment measures, such as preventing non-essential travel, pose an additional challenge for the EU, given its policy of free movement of goods, people and services.
Representatives of the main pharmaceutical companies involved in producing vaccines for Covid told European lawmakers on Thursday that they were working around the clock to develop and produce the vaccines.
The CEO of CureVac suggested that his vaccine could be approved in June. In the meantime, the European Medicines Agency is studying data from tests conducted by Johnson and Johnson and could issue market approval in a few weeks. To date, European regulators have approved jabs from AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer.