Great Britain was the first country to give the green light to the corona vaccine from the French pharmaceutical company Valneva.

The responsible supervisory authority MHRA approved the application for people between the ages of 18 and 50 on Thursday.

There must be at least four weeks between the two vaccinations.

This means that a total of six vaccines against the corona virus have now been approved in Great Britain.

According to a statement, MHRA boss June Raine said the approval was given after a strict review of the safety, quality and effectiveness of the vaccine.

On February 1, 2021, the British government announced that it had ordered 40 million more doses - a total of 100 million - of the VLA2001 vaccine.

Six months later she terminated the contract and accused Valneva of breach of contract.

"Supply exceeds demand"

Meanwhile, according to the pharmaceutical association IFPMA, more corona vaccine doses are available globally than can be administered.

"The vaccine supply currently exceeds the demand," said IFPMA Director General Thomas Cueni in Geneva.

Since the start of production towards the end of 2020, around 13.7 billion vaccine doses have been manufactured and around eleven billion have been administered.

A total of almost eight billion vaccine doses could be produced this year, said Cueni.

Still, not all people who needed it would be vaccinated.

This is not due to the lack of vaccine doses - as was the case until late summer 2021 - but to the fact that the vaccination programs in some countries have not fully started.

This must be better organized in the event of possible new pandemics.

Cueni and the bosses of the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Albert Bourla, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Bill Anderson and Eli Lilly, David A. Ricks criticized ongoing calls to suspend patents on Covid-19 vaccines or drugs.

The investments that led to the rapid development of vaccines and medicines were only possible over the years thanks to patent protection.

Pfizer, together with the Mainz-based company Biontech, launched the world's first corona vaccine in December 2020.

Pfizer boss Bourla hopes to have a new corona vaccine by autumn that works equally well against all virus variants.

The aim is also to develop a vaccine that, like influenza, protects against severe disease progression and infection for a year.