Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Tuesday it plans to convene an extraordinary meeting on 29 December to decide if there is enough safety and efficacy data about the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for it to be approved. The regulator also said it could decide as early as 12 January whether to approve a rival shot by American pharmaceutical company Moderna Inc, which submitted its request to US and European regulators this week.
If its vaccine is approved, Germany-based BioNTech said the shot’s use in Europe could begin before the end of 2020, but that seems quite ambitious, given that the EU Commission usually needs to rubber-stamp the regulator’s decision, AP noted. Still, the agency has also left open the possibility that the date of that meeting will be brought forward if data comes in faster.
The date now being eyed would be later than some European countries had hoped. Germany, which has given BioNTech 375 million euros in funding to develop the vaccine, has been preparing to start immunizing people from mid-December onward. On Tuesday, officials in Germany, France and the Netherlands cautioned that vaccine programs likely won’t start until the end of the year. “With the information we got in recent days we have to assume that approval will only happen around the turn of the year,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said. His comments were echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge, who said authorities in those countries are working to begin vaccinating people in the first week of January.
If its vaccine is approved, Germany-based BioNTech said the shot’s use in Europe could begin before the end of 2020, but that seems quite ambitious, given that the EU Commission usually needs to rubber-stamp the regulator’s decision, AP noted. Still, the agency has also left open the possibility that the date of that meeting will be brought forward if data comes in faster.
The date now being eyed would be later than some European countries had hoped. Germany, which has given BioNTech 375 million euros in funding to develop the vaccine, has been preparing to start immunizing people from mid-December onward. On Tuesday, officials in Germany, France and the Netherlands cautioned that vaccine programs likely won’t start until the end of the year. “With the information we got in recent days we have to assume that approval will only happen around the turn of the year,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said. His comments were echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge, who said authorities in those countries are working to begin vaccinating people in the first week of January.
