Fight against corona mutants: Ursula von der Leyen's five

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EU Commission President von der Leyen: "Science has overtaken industry."

Photo: ARIS OIKONOMOU / AFP

Ursula von der Leyen stands in the press room of the Berlaymont, the powerful headquarters of the EU Commission, and is in her element.

For weeks she had to listen to some harsh criticism of her vaccine strategy, which is now considered a debacle, especially in Germany, and it became abundantly clear that the defensive is not von der Leyen's business.

She seems all the more relaxed now that she can finally do what she particularly likes again: announce great things in the light of the spotlights.

It quickly becomes clear that von der Leyen wants to get back on the offensive in the fight against the corona virus.

Whether she succeeds in this could decide whether her term of office is viewed as a success - or whether it may even end prematurely.

A five-point plan should now set it up:

• The

  sequencing of the genome of

  the virus should be significantly accelerated so that new variants can be recognized more quickly than before.

  The EU countries should receive at least 75 million euros from EU funds.

• This information is intended to

  facilitate

  the adaptation of vaccines to new virus variants

  ;

  Von der Leyen intends to provide a further 150 million euros for corresponding research projects.

• A new

  network for clinical studies

  called »Vaccelerate« (composed of the English words for vaccine and accelerate), in which 16 EU states and five other countries are participating, is intended to improve the data situation on the pandemic and the pathogen.

• The

  approval of new vaccines

  by the EU Medicines Agency (EMA) is to be accelerated, based on the annual influenza model.

• The

  mass production of vaccines

  should be expanded significantly, supply chains secured and bottlenecks identified.

  In addition, new contracts with manufacturers should contain "detailed and credible plans" for production capacities in the EU - a clear reference to the previous glitches in the delivery of the vaccines.

The plan bears the somewhat martial name »Hera Incubator«, which is intended to express that a new EU authority called the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (Hera) is being hatched here.

It appeared in a Commission plan to strengthen resilience against health threats last November.

But von der Leyen's fireworks of announcements are not over yet: They also announce a new contract with the US company Moderna, with which the delivery of 160 million vaccine doses was previously agreed.

Moderna is now expected to deliver a further 150 million cans this year, with an option for another 150 million for 2022.

Doubts About Conventional Vaccines?

However, the EU Commission had previously ordered more than 1.5 billion vaccine doses from six manufacturers and secured options for 760 million more - more than enough for 450 million EU citizens.

The problem now lies more in the manufacture and delivery of the vaccines.

Why the Commission is now ordering a further 300 million cans remains unclear.

An obvious reason would be that the Commission wants to be sure to stock up on the best vaccines - those that are based on the novel mRNA process and seem to be clearly superior to conventional vaccines.

On the other hand, doubts about conventional vaccines from manufacturers such as AstraZeneca are also growing in the population.

The commission has now firmly ordered a total of a billion doses of mRNA vaccines from the manufacturers Moderna, Biontech / Pfizer and Curevac, with options for another 430 million.

This means that all 450 million EU citizens could theoretically only be immunized with mRNA vaccines.

When it comes to the approval of the vaccines and the question of liability, von der Leyen apparently no longer just wants to play it safe - because, according to information, that was the main reason for the late orders by the Commission.

Unlike Great Britain and the USA, for example, it decided against emergency approval.

The official reason: You do not want to endanger the trust of the population by a quick procedure in the medical examination.

However, the fact that in the event of an emergency approval the national governments would have had to be liable for any vaccine damage - and not the manufacturers - also played a role.

Apparently both the EU Commission and some member states wanted to prevent this.

Above all, the US company Pfizer is said to have long resisted assuming liability.

Von der Leyen is now ready to introduce an emergency authorization for vaccines at EU level "with joint liability of the member states".

For this purpose, "a targeted change in drug legislation" is also conceivable.

Speed, that seems clear, may in future be a little more important than the last bit of security.

The SPD MEP Tiemo Wölken, for example, praises von der Leyen's proposals, but is "surprised" that they are only now coming.

Production and procurement, for example, »should have been started in the summer«.

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton objected that they didn't even know which vaccine would win the race.

And before that, it was just impossible to identify bottlenecks in the supply chains.

When it became clear which vaccines would be successful, they acted as quickly as possible.

Actually, her commission was not that slow in procuring vaccines, as was the case with Leyen's embassy.

The researchers were simply even faster.

"Last summer we would have been lucky if we had had vaccines in April of this year," says von der Leyen.

"Science has overtaken industry."

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