NEW VACCINE AGAINST THE CORONA VIRUS: HOW IT IS APPROVED
NOVEMBER 12:
A few days ago the German medical company BIONTECH
and the American company PHIZER announced that they together had developed an
efficient vaccine against the corona virus. They claim that it is 90 %
efficient, and that it is ready for approval by the authorities.
When the EU is concerned the European Commission
yesterday bought 300 million doses of the vaccine – for distribution to all
member states.
In the meantime the European Medicines Agency (
EMA ) in Amsterdam will examine the vaccine according to European rules and
regulations. EMA is a scientific,
decentralised agency under of the EU. It
has existed since 1995, and its task is to control and approve all medical
products to be made available in all the 27 EU member states + in the three
associated EEA countries Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein. When it has given
its green light the product may be sold in all the 30 countries. To do this process together saves time and
money. The EMA works together with about
4.500 specialists all over Europe. It has
7 working groups – each dealing with specific medical products. And it has a secretariat of about 600 persons
recruited in all EU member states.
As soon as EMA has given the green light to the
new corona vaccine it may be used.
This is EMA’s home page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Medicines_Agency
BIONTECH and PHIZER are, of course, not the only
medical companies trying to develop a vaccine against the corona virus. Altogether 52 vaccines are actually being
tested on human beings, and 87 are tried out on animals at the moment.
The New York Times has made a CORONAVIRUS VACCINE
TRACKER available:
https://www.nytimes.com/
Logo for European Medicines Agency:
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