EU: anti-Covid vaccination to start from December 27 (von der Leyen)

Vaccination against Covid-19 will begin in the EU on December 27, 28 and 29, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced in a tweet on Thursday.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA, or EMA in English) has announced that it would look on December 21 - a week earlier than expected - on the fate of the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech.

"It's Europe time"

The Commission had specified that it would give its conditional marketing authorization within two days of this green light, after examining the EMA's opinion and consulting the Member States.

"It is time for Europe: on December 27, 28 and 29, vaccination will start across the European Union. We are protecting our citizens and are stronger together," the head of the hospital said on Twitter. European executive.

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"It is in the case where everything goes as planned (...) This is obviously conditional", since the authorization of Brussels can only be done "on the basis of a positive evaluation" of the European regulator, a nuanced a spokesperson for the Commission.

The first batches of vaccines, whose orders for Europe have been centralized by Brussels, will be distributed between the States according to the size of their population.

Green light in many other states

The vaccine jointly developed by the American laboratories Pfizer and German BioNTech is the first to have been approved in a number of Western countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, where the first injections have taken place in recent days.

It has also received a green light in many other states such as Mexico and Saudi Arabia.

The EU has already concluded contracts for seven anti-Covid vaccines.

The EMA is planning a meeting on January 12 to deliberate on the fate of American biotech Moderna's vaccine, which could thus become the second to be authorized in the EU.