The European Health Commission announced today (Monday) that it has approved the use of the corona vaccine from the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German pharmaceutical company Biontech.
EU Health Commissioner Ursula van der Lane said she expected EU countries to act as soon as possible to vaccinate their citizens. Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza welcomed the decision, saying: “This is the news we have been waiting for. We can now open a new chapter that will give us hope and daring to deal with the disease that killed 470,000 Europeans.”
Italy, Austria, Germany and France have already announced today that they will start vaccinating their citizens this coming Sunday, hoping to be able to vaccinate all health teams in these countries by the end of the year.
A senior European Health Commission official told Reuters that the organization believes the new strain of corona virus, which was discovered and spread in the UK, is not resistant to the vaccine. The official estimated that it would take a long time to vaccinate the entire population of the continent and that additional measures such as restrictions and closures would be required before the epidemic was eradicated.
Earlier today, France announced a halt to the movement of all goods from its territory to Britain, in an attempt to combat the spread of the Corona virus into French territory. The French decision, which caused chaos in the ports and the crossing of the border between Britain and France in the Eurostar tunnel, caused a big surprise among senior London officials. “The French decision has surprised us, but it is not expected to disrupt the supply of food and medicine in the short term,” said British MP Grant Schaps.
The mutation detected in the corona virus is considered to be 70% more contagious than the two species hitherto known to science and has been detected, at this stage, in the territory of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and South Africa.