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EU could see first COVID-19 vaccinations in early 2021: Health agency
A European source told AFP on Tuesday that a vaccine could be authorized for use in the EU in "early 2021", after the announcement that US pharmaceutical group Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech's vaccine had shown 90 percent effectiveness in phase three trials.
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This combination of pictures created on Monday shows (top, file photo taken on Sept.8) the logo of German biopharmaceutical company BioNTech at its headquarters in Mainz, western Germany, and (bottom, file photo taken on May 05, 2014) the logo of Global pharmaceutical company Pfizer at their world headquarters in Manhattan in New York.
(Getty Images via AFP/Spencer Platt and Yann Schreiber)
T
he first vaccinations in the European Union against Covid-19 could take place in the first quarter of 2021 in an optimistic scenario, the head of the EU health agency told AFP on Wednesday.
"I think optimistically first quarter next year, but I can't be more precise," Andrea Ammon, the director of the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), said in an interview.
A European source told AFP on Tuesday that a vaccine could be authorized for use in the EU in "early 2021", after the announcement that US pharmaceutical group Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech's vaccine had shown 90 percent effectiveness in phase three trials.
"Of course it's promising," said Ammon, stressing that so far it is a "press release and not yet a (scientific) peer review, so we have to see what the final assessment will be."
Ammon said the pandemic's development in Europe was "very, very concerning" and all indicators "are going in the wrong direction right now."
Since the beginning of the outbreak, Europe has suffered at least 311,000 deaths from more than 13 million infections, and many countries have been hit by a second wave.
Ammon urged Europeans to respect their countries' restrictions and measures to curb the spread of the virus, "as hard as it may be."
