EU commission urges member states to speed up vaccination
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is urging member states to speed up the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations to ensure that at least 80% of the most vulnerable people to the virus — those over age 80 — are vaccinated by March.
In nonbinding recommendations published Tuesday, the European Commission also called on the 27 EU member states to accelerate the rollout of vaccination so that 70% of the adult population across the bloc is vaccinated by the end of summer.
The EU has sealed six vaccine contracts for more than to 2 billion doses, with Moderna, AstraZeneca-Oxford, Sanofi-GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Pfizer-BioNTech and CureVac. But only the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been approved for use so far in the bloc, enough to vaccinate 380 million people, more than 80% of the bloc's population.
Speaking before Thursday's virtual EU summit to discuss COVID-19, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that after securing enough doses, it's now time “to accelerate the delivery and speed up vaccination."
“Our aim is to have 70% of our adult population vaccinated by summer. That could be a turning point in our fight against this virus," Von der Leyen said.
Despite the relatively slow start of vaccination campaigns across the the bloc amid delays in the production of shots, European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas expressed confidence the targets are “totally feasible."
“By the end of Q1, Europe will have an impressive quantity of doses that can be deployed across the European Union," he said.
According to health commissioner Stella Kyriakides, 400,000 EU citizens have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. She said the commission is also working with member states to allow a vaccination certificates...
