The president of the Commission is running in favor of the measure, although she recognizes that the States have the competence to decide
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has asked this Wednesday that the debate be opened within the European Union on the convenience of making vaccination against the coronavirus mandatory to counteract the resistance of part of the population to inoculate . “I think it is understandable and appropriate to have this discussion now: How can we encourage (vaccination) and potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the EU. It is necessary to discuss it and have a common approach, “said Von der Leyen at a press conference in Brussels.
The head of the Community Executive wanted to specify that it is her “personal” opinion because she does not have the power to make “any kind of recommendation” on this matter to the member states, which are the ones who have exclusive powers in health matters. However, the former German minister and doctor by training has lamented that there are “life-saving vaccines” in a “horrible” pandemic context and yet “they are not being used appropriately everywhere.”
According to the data offered this Wednesday by Brussels, 76% of the adult population in the European Union has already been inoculated with the complete guideline of protection against covid-19. This means in general terms that 66% of the total European population is fully vaccinated, but that there are also a third, that is 150 million EU citizens, who are not, despite the fact that “a large majority could” .
For this reason, the Community Executive calls to continue with the vaccination campaigns and speed up the inoculation of the booster dose to the entire vaccinated population, something that Von der Leyen has said is assured with the 360 million doses of messenger RNA vaccines available to the EU by the end of the first quarter of 2022.
Negotiated contracts
The latest purchase contracts negotiated by Brussels with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna foresee having enough vaccines to reinforce the protection of Europeans, adapt the formula to new variants such as omicron and also produce serum to immunize minors.
In this sense, the Commission has announced that it has a commitment from Pfizer that its recently approved vaccine for children between the ages of five and eleven will be available in the EU on December 13.
Von der Leyen has appeared before the press to call for the reinforcement of vaccination campaigns against the rise in infections in the European Union and the appearance of new variants, when the numbers of hospital admissions and deaths continue to increase a few weeks after the Christmas holidays.
.
#Von #der #Leyen #calls #debate #mandatory #vaccination