EU agency approves Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine in desperate virus battle

Amsterdam - A second vaccine to tame the virus rampaging across the continent.

The European Union’s medicines agency gave the green light Wednesday to Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine, a decision that gives the 27-nation bloc a second vaccine to use in the desperate battle to tame the virus rampaging across the continent.

The approval recommendation by the European Medicines Agency’s human medicines committee — which must be rubber stamped by the EU’s executive commission — comes amid high rates of infections in many EU countries and strong criticism of the slow pace of vaccinations across the region of some 450 million people.

“This vaccine provides us with another tool to overcome the current emergency,” said Emer Cooke, Executive Director of EMA. “It is a testament to the efforts and commitment of all involved that we have this second positive vaccine recommendation just short of a year since the pandemic was declared by WHO.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the approval and added in a tweet: “Now we are working at full speed to approve it & make it available in the EU.”

The EMA has already approved a coronavirus vaccine made by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech. Both vaccines require giving people two shots.

Ahead of the meeting on the Moderna vaccine, the agency said in a tweet that its experts were “working hard to clarify all outstanding issues with the company.” It did not elaborate on what those issues were. Moderna also declined to comment.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn — who has in the past been critical of the slow pace of the EMA — said he expected the Moderna vaccine to begin rolling out to EU nations next week. Germany would get 2 million doses in the first quarter and 50 million in all of 2021, Spahn told reporters in Berlin.

“The problem is the shortage of production capacity with global demand,” he said.