Two days before a European summit on the fight against the coronavirus, the members of the European Commission wanted to bang their fists on the table.
This Tuesday, during a press conference organized in Brussels (Belgium), the European Commissioner for Health, Stella Kyriakides, urged the 27 to "speed up the vaccinations".
In Europe, several voices are raised to criticize the rate of vaccination compared to that of the United Kingdom, the United States or Israel.
"We propose that by March, Member States have vaccinated at least 80% of health professionals and those over 80," said Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas.
Before going even further: "We also propose that by the summer, Member States have vaccinated 70% of adults."
Towards a European vaccination certificate?
Cutting off any possible shortages, the health commissioner said the EU's purchasing strategy meant there were already enough doses to immunize 80% of the 450 million Europeans.
Asked earlier in the European Parliament about these delays in distribution to countries, Stella Kyriakides assured that "this bottleneck was due to the global shortage of production capacities, rather than to a shortage of vaccines already ordered by the EU ".
Today we present a new plan to step up the fight against # COVID19:
🔸Speed ​​up vaccination, increase manufacturing capacity
🔸Update testing strategies to cover new variants
🔸Maintain measures that keep us safe
I look forward to discussing with EU leaders at #EUCO.
- Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) January 19, 2021
In a statement that followed, the European Commission plans to "work with member states and businesses to maximize and increase vaccine manufacturing capacity."
The Vice-President of the European Commission also indicated that the Commission “is working with Member States to put in place vaccination certificates which can be quickly used within the EU and beyond.
In France, the idea of ​​a vaccine passport seems to find the support of a majority of citizens.
Find more variants
"A common EU approach to certificates […] would also open the door to other uses to help lift restrictions," said Margaritis Schinas.
While Greece said it was in favor of such a measure, not all countries were in favor yet.
Finally, the Commission has also called on the 27 Member States to increase sequencing to at least 5-10% of positive test results, saying it is ready to help them by raising funds.
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“At present, many European countries test less than 1% of samples, which is far too low to identify the progression of variants or to detect new ones,” said Stella Kyriakides.
Authorization of the AstraZeneca vaccine studied by the end of the month
The EU has already signed six contracts with pharmaceutical groups, is continuing its discussions with two other laboratories, and could obtain up to 2.5 billion doses.
The surplus should be distributed to the poorest countries, outside the European Union.
At the moment, only the vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have received the green light from the European Medicines Agency for deployment in the EU.
The European regulator will look at the AstraZeneca vaccine by the end of the month.
The pandemic has killed at least 400,000 people in Europe.