Stefan Olsson, Director for Employment in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, told the European Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) that a classification of Sars-CoV-2 as a group 4 biological agent could have an impact on the development of a vaccine.
During the exchanges, the overwhelming majority of MEPs from all political groups criticised the decision taken by national comitology experts (see EUROPE 12487/2) to classify the virus in group 3, which designates a serious disease but which is subject to effective prophylaxis or treatment, and not in group 4, which designates serious diseases for which there is no effective treatment, as is currently the case for Covid-19.
The senior official recalled in his intervention that the decision in comitology was taken unanimously by the national experts on the basis of “much broader” criteria than just the question of whether or not an effective treatment existed.
“If you read the details of the directive, you will see that if you take a classification in group 3 as supposed to group 4, the big difference are for laboratories. Here, there are very severe rules that are recommended for Group 3, but are obligatory for Group 4”, explained the official, listing the need to install airlocks, negative air pressure, etc.
“There are only 50 laboratories in the whole world that can handle a group 4 and there are very few in Europe. This has been part of the assessment of the qualification but there are consequences, clearly. (...) We also need to remember that qualification could have very serious consequences for the development of a vaccine”.
Mr Olsson further explained that, on the one hand, another difference between groups 3 and 4 is that, according to the Directive, a group 3 biological agent “can cause” a serious disease, while category 4 refers to a biological agent that “causes” a serious disease, such as the Ebola virus, which systematically causes a serious and often fatal disease, while Sars-CoV-2 remains benign in the vast majority of cases.
In general, Mr Olsson recalled that the differences in protective measures were minor (except for laboratories) between group 3 and 4, while they were much greater between groups 2 and 3.
The College is expected to adopt the update of Annex III to Directive 2000/54/EC at the meeting of the College of European Commissioners on Wednesday 3 June, after which European Parliament and the EU Council have one month to object. If necessary, Member States will then have 5 months to implement the new provisions, which would bring them to mid-Autumn. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)