The Environment, Public Health and Food Security Committee (ENVI) hold a debate on COVID-19 variants and how effective vaccines are against them with representatives from the European Medicine Agency (EMA), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). Following this meeting, Pascal CANFIN (RE, FR), ENVI Chair, gives a statement on a faster authorisation process for updated vaccines and on the role of vaccination certificates.

Brussels

statement

meeting

Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

healthcare safety (T)

World Health Organisation

European Medicines Agency

CANFIN, Pascal (Renew, FR)

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

Coronavirus outbreak (T)

vaccination strategy (T)

COVID-19 variants and the vaccines' efficacy: statement by Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVI Chair

Title:  COVID-19 variants and the vaccines&apos; efficacy: statement by Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVI Chair

SOUNDBITE (French), Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVI Chair, All the information available after the exchanges that we had today with the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency, show that despite mutations the vaccines remain effective, a bit less but still effective. Nevertheless, we obviously need a legal basis to have an authorization process if a vaccine has to be adjusted in order to be more powerful against the variants and this is what we will be looking into during the next few days, so that we can allow, where appropriate, a new procedure shorter than the initial.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVI Chair, If it will be necessary to re-authorize a vaccine 2.0 that has already been accepted and was controlled during several months before the launching and it is efficient against the new variants like Brazilian or South African for example, the procedure should take maximum a few weeks, I hope.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVI Chair, With AstraZeneca the things are very simple. Since the beginning they do not respect any of the commitments they have made. It was true in December, in January and now it's true in March. Three weeks ago, the AstraZeneca manager told us that they will be very close to respect their engagement in the second quarter of the year, namely to deliver 180 million doses to europeans because they will take some of the missing doses from the rest of the world in order to be able to deliver it to Europeans.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVI Chair, What do we learn now?  Finally, they are not going to do so because there are encountering export restrictions.  But these export restrictions were very well known before. Yet, the AstraZeneca's boss told us something completely wrong.  And now in regards with the deliveries in the first quarter, they are not even able to honor the reduced numbers on which they have committed to.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVi Chair, We are facing a company that poses us a lot of problems because they never keep the commitments they have made. And that's why we fully support Thierry Breton's work to put the maximum pressure on AstraZeneca and also to authorize other vaccines like Johnson&amp;Johnson to accelerate the process with other vaccines so that we continue without AstraZeneca's which obviously is starting to be very problematic in terms of non-compliance with their commitments.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVI, There are two things regarding the vaccination certificates. The first one is the harmonization of the process and procedures. Do we adopt the same document all over the Europe which allows us to certify that a person was vaccinated or not? Obviously, we have to do it and this is the core of the text that will be presented in a few days by the European Commission to ensure that if someone is vaccinated in a country, the procedure to recognize his vaccination is immediately accepted by any another EU country of. I think it's common sense and it's welcomed.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVI Chair, Then there is another question regarding the rights given by this certificate. For example, are there certain rules that will allow traveling for vaccinated people compared to others who will not be able to travel if they do not have this certificate?This raises certains problems. Because as long as we are not able to vaccinate all the people who want to be vaccinated, it is difficult to give rights associated with this cerificate. It will be unbearable for someone who wants to be vaccinated but cannnot, to see that somebody who was already vaccinated beacuse of his age for example, can travel while the other one cannot. Two things must be distinguished: the rights cannot be imposed for the moment because it is quite early but on the other hand, now, it is necessary to launch this procedure as the European Commission does, to ensure that when the time comes we have the right harmonised and integrated system which is as effective as possible.