The EU will speed up vaccination while trying to circumvent border closure

“Given the evidence of substantially higher transmissibility of new coronavirus variants, national authorities should be prepared to apply even more stringent measures.” With this message, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) accompanied this Thursday its latest evaluation on the impact of the three mutations of the pathogen detected to date (the British, the South African and the Brazilian) on the continent .

There is no evidence that its effects are more serious, but there is evidence of its greater ability to spread. So the intense red is spreading throughout Europe and with it, the ECDC raised this Thursday the alert on the risk of community transmission to “very high”. He advises more rigorous confinements, preparing laboratories for massive (and accurate) testing with variant genome sequencing, “hardened” traces, and a ban on non-essential travel.

The forceful message was made public minutes before European leaders began their ninth videoconference summit since the outbreak of the pandemic. An appointment dedicated exclusively to the coronavirus in which those two magic verbs turned into a mantra were conjugated: “Share” and “coordinate.”

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, gave priority to the debate on the need to speed up vaccination rates. And Ursula von der Leyen brought to the table the recommendations launched this week by the European Commission; that in March 80% of those over 80 years of age and the health and care personnel on the front line are immunized. And facing the summer, 70% of adult Europeans.

The leaders assumed these levels as possible although it will be necessary to accelerate the production of roads. In fact, there were “many questions about transparency and delivery schedule” of the different formulas. With the two vaccines already authorized in Europe, 80% of the European population could be immunized. In this sense, BionTech-Pfizer seems to return to the initial distribution rhythm next week and in two more weeks the first doses of the Oxford serum could be distributed, which on the 29th would receive authorization from the European Medicines Agency.

The “unanimous” agreement was quick on one of the measures that has been in debate for months: the common framework for the use of rapid antigen tests and the mutual recognition of the results of the Covid-19 tests throughout the EU.

“The mutual recognition of the results of the SARS-CoV2 infection tests issued by certified health organizations is essential to facilitate cross-border movement, the location and treatment of contacts,” was underlined in a communication released by the Council just one hour after starting the summit.

Test and quarantines

But the discussions about mobility had a greater background: the convenience or not of imposing more restrictive controls at the borders and the absolute veto of non-essential movements, both intra-European and outside the Schengen area. “At this stage, the total closure of the borders does not make any sense,” Von der Leyen had claimed the day before in the European Parliament before the possibility of a new chaotic bolt like the one experienced in the first wave.

Preliminary tests and mandatory quarantines seem to be reinforced as a general rule. But without ruling out the absolute ban on travel to the areas with the greatest proven expansion of the new mutations (it is already the case in the United Kingdom). The other debate is the one that revolves around a kind of ‘vaccination passport’.

Here the majority criterion was that the certificate in question should be more “a medical document” than a safe-conduct to travel within the EU. At least in this incipient phase of the immunization process in which there is no massive distribution of serum and this without losing sight of the fact that vaccination is not mandatory in the bulk of the Union. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, supported that in any case “the approval and its potential use” should be “coordinated and approved by the 27”.