EU Launches HERA Incubator Bloc But Still Struggles With Slow Vaccination

EU Launches HERA Incubator Bloc But Still Struggles With Slow Vaccination

As the European Union launches HERA Incubator, a new public/private corporation to research and combat new COVID-19 variants, the bloc continues with its poor showing when it comes to coronavirus vaccination

BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th February, 2021) As the European Union launches HERA Incubator, a new public/private corporation to research and combat new COVID-19 variants, the bloc continues with its poor showing when it comes to coronavirus vaccination.

While other countries have made significant progress, including Israel having vaccinated over 75 percent of its population and the United Arab Emirates having done the same to some 50 percent of its citizens, the EU's less than 5 percent look quite paltry.

To add insult to injury, the United Kingdom has vaccinated over 20 percent, showing up Brussels with the efficiency, agility and flexibility of London's acquisition of vaccines, as well as during the rollout of the vaccine.

So it makes sense that after staying behind for so long, Brussels has finally decided to offer emergency authorizations for all vaccines, on condition that the member states agree to take responsibility for it.

The US has a special service and procedure for such emergency authorizations, BARDA, and the UK health authority has an equivalent emergency procedure that allowed it to give the green light about a month before the EU to the vaccines submitted for approval by the laboratories. A a result, the UK started vaccinating with the AstraZeneca vaccine on December 8, while the EU only started on December 22. By launching HERA Incubator, the EU aims to create its own version of BARDA.

The initiative will engage in various activities, such as detection of new variants, investigating a possibility for accelerated authorization of coronavirus vaccines, developing vaccines against new strains, as well as increasing the scale and speed vaccine manufacturing on the continent.

ARE EU'S VACCINATION PLANS FEASIBLE?

It is hard to know where the European Union actually stands in the late deliveries of much-needed vaccine doses.

For example, Pfizer is reported to have failed the bloc with 10 million doses promised for December. Despite that, the EU has ordered new doses, bringing the total to 600 million vaccine doses.

Brussels has claimed that Pfizer committed to shipping 3.5 million doses a week, starting January. This week's nearly five million doses seems to show that the company trying to make amends for the previous failings. The same number should arrive next week, as well as in the first week of March.

A second contract has just been signed by the European Commission with Moderna for another 300 million doses. Meanwhile, both US's Moderna and the UK's AstraZeneca faced delays over the last two months.

Apart from the issues with the delivery of registered vaccines, the potential fourth vaccine, developed by Johnson & Johnson, is being looked into by the European Medicines Agency, with potential authorization coming about mid-March.

So, will the EU be able to make good on its promise about vaccinating 70 percent of its population by the end of summer? Jean-Luc Gala, a virologist at the UCLouvain university in Belgium, told Sputnik that it is difficult to say right now.

"Every emergency and massive operation such as this vaccination campaign can encounter delays, industrial production difficulties and the like. But next to the four vaccines mentioned, there are two more coming, the German CureVac and the American Novavax, and there is the possibility of also using the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, which means that the present glut will be over and the large vaccination centers will be able to vaccinate massively from June onwards probably," the expert said.�

Marc Van Ranst, a virologist and professor at the KU Leuven university, told Sputnik that vaccination was still the only way to overcome the pandemic.

"There are reasons for hope though. Europe is late but a fourth vaccine, that of Johnson & Johnson is in the process of getting the green light of the EMA. It will begin to be available in mid-March. The second reason is that the most fragile in the population have been vaccinated already, as well as most medical staff. We are progressing," Van Ranst said.

Even so, this is not the reason for people loosen up and forget the precaution measures that are implemented to halt the disease.

"Our common goal is to make the epidemic go away, so we must remain careful and serious about the respect of the confinement measures, the respect of rules and of the curfew. This is and will remain a precarious situation for a few more months," Van Ranst added.