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/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

Logo for European Medicines Agency:



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