Brussels urges to vaccinate 80% of European octogenarians

Two days after European leaders share their national strategies against the pandemic again, and the debate on whether or not to enable a kind of vaccination certificate as an incentive to travel across the continent is now open (today only with value). medical, but in the future perhaps a kind of “vaccination passport”), the European Commission this Tuesday launched what it identifies as a package of “key actions” that, in short, encourages governments to spur the immunization process of the citizen.

The “necessary actions to intensify the fight against the pandemic” that Brussels invites all capitals to follow and that Ursula von der Leyen herself will transfer to the heads of State and Government in the ‘video-summit’ scheduled for this Thursday, are specified in two concrete milestones: Member States must accelerate the deployment of vaccination to ensure that in just two months, at least 80% of people over 80 years of age and 80% of health professionals and nursing home staff must have already received doses of serum. Facing the summer, the Community Executive considers essential that “at least” 70% of the adult population should be vaccinated.

«Vaccination is essential to get out of this crisis. We have already obtained enough vaccines for the entire population of the European Union. Now we must accelerate delivery and vaccination, “stressed Von der Leyen, who believes that the process that was launched at the end of December represents a” turning point “in the war against the pathogen, but only” we will put an end to this pandemic when all the world’s people have access to vaccines. We will intensify our efforts to help ensure vaccines for our neighbors and partners around the world, ”he remarked.

The Commission insists that it has secured 2.3 billion doses as part of a broader portfolio of contracts with the pharmaceutical industry. Enough to guarantee the immunization of the European population and in other areas of the planet. In distribution are the formulas of the companies BioNTech / Pfizer and those of Moderna, which “alone will provide doses for 380 million people, or more than 80% of the population of the EU.” The European Medicines Agency also plans to authorize the marketing of the vaccine created by Oxford / AstraZeneca over the next week and has already begun “the process of continuous review” of the one devised in the laboratories of Johnson & Johnson.

Precisely today, in a plenary session in the European Parliament, the main political groups have once again questioned the secrecy of the contracts signed by the European Commission with the pharmaceutical industry. Both the purchase conditions and the prices are kept secret from MEPs who have accepted a confidentiality clause and who have been able to see any of these contracts (skewed) in a room with surveillance with the only option to take notes.

The Health Commissioner herself, Stella Kyriakides, has accepted the need for “one hundred percent” transparency in all variables related to vaccination campaigns, but has assumed that the institution does not have the capacity to reveal the full content of what was signed without that companies agree to publicize these contracts. And that has happened only with one of the six contracts (with the CureVac laboratory) signed by the Community Executive on behalf of the EU. And it has not revealed the entire content.