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A French cabinet minister has called on European Union countries not to use Russian or Chinese vaccines for Covid 19 unless they are approved by the EU drug regulator.
European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune warned that Russian and Chinese vaccines pose a threat to the bloc’s unity and public health. After a difficult start to the vaccination campaign, which left the European Union behind some other countries like Britain, some member states in Central Europe have bought or are looking at the possibility of buying Russian or Chinese vaccines.
Asked if each member state was simply doing “what it wanted”, Minister Beaune told RTL radio: “If they choose the Chinese or Russian vaccine, I think that would be quite serious“. He said that this “would pose a problem in terms of our solidarity and pose a health risk because the Russian vaccine is not yet authorized in Europe“. The EU has so far procured vaccines centrally, through its executive body, the European Commission. However the Russian Sputnik V vaccine has been approved or is being evaluated for approval in Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Hungary has already started immunizing people with the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine and the Russian one, while Poland is discussing buying the Chinese vaccine. The Italian region of Lazio said it would require 1 million doses of the Russian vaccine if approved by the EMA, while the government of the small independent enclave of San Marino said it had started using the Russian vaccine this week. European drug regulator EMA said on Thursday it had launched an evaluation of the Sputnik V vaccine.
But even if approved, the European Commission has no obligation to include it on its list. Europe has so far approved the Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccines, while work continues on the evaluation of the CureVac and Novavax candidate vaccines. The EMA is expected to announce its decision on the single-dose vaccine with Johnson & Johnson on March 11th.
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