Overwhelmed with all the information about COVID-19 vaccines? Let's have a quick look at the vaccines.
The European Commission believes that an effective and safe vaccine against the virus is our best bet to achieve a permanent solution to the pandemic. The development and distribution of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 is at the heart of the European Commission’s coronavirus response.
As on 7th June 2021, 270 million doses have been administered in the EU with 48% of the EU population having received atleast 1 dose of the vaccine.
Vaccine development is a complex and lengthy process, which normally takes around 10 years. With the vaccines strategy, the Commission supported efforts and made the development more efficient, resulting in safe and effective vaccines being distributed in the EU by the end of 2020. This achievement required running clinical trials in parallel with investments in production capacity to be able to produce millions of doses of a successful vaccine. Strict and robust authorisation procedures and safety standards are respected at all times.
Till date 4 safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 have been authorised for use in the EU following positive scientific recommendations by the European Medicines Agency based on their safety and efficacy data.These 4 vaccines are also WHO certified COVID vaccines.
The safety and effectiveness of the vaccines will continue to be monitored as it is used across the EU, through the EU pharmacovigilance system and additional studies by the company and by European authorities.
The Commission has also started work to anticipate and tackle new variants of the virus and to rapidly develop and produce on a large-scale vaccine effective against those variants. As robust clinical data becomes available, these vaccines could be administered to cover more population groups such as pregnant & lactating women & younger age groups.
Additionally, the Commission is in discussion with Sanofi-GSK, CureVac, Novavax & Valneva for procuring vaccines manufactured by them with the aim to step up vaccine
manufacturing capacity in the EU.
For more information:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1103
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