Le Monde reports about pressure on EU regulator to approve Pfizer vaccine



01/18/2021 2:56 AM


The European Medicines Agency (EMA) was under pressure to certify coronavirus vaccines, in particular the American-German one from Pfizer and BioNTech, the French newspaper Le Monde claims, citing documents and correspondence leaked online.



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According to the newspaper, there were problems during the approval of the vaccine. For example, not all production sites were inspected and some necessary data on commercial batches of vaccines was missing: they might not correspond to those used during clinical trials. 

The vaccine, however, was approved. The newspaper notes that the EBA approved the vaccine on December 21, 2020 - three weeks later than the UK and two weeks later than the US. This suggests that the agency still took some time to give the "green light" to use the vaccine.

Earlier it became known that Pfizer would temporarily reduce supplies of the vaccine to Europe. Reduced supply was explained by the modernization of production facilities. At the same time, it was reported that more than 30 elderly people who were vaccinated with a vaccine from Pfizer died in Europe. However, their deaths may not have been directly related to the vaccine.

source: lemonde.fr


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