After a chaotic year of scrambling, the European Commission presented on Wednesday 17 March a series of initiatives to accompany a gradual and safe lifting of the Covid-19 restrictions. It remains to be seen, as is often the case with public health policies, whether Member States will adopt them.
Overall, the general communication “invites Member States to adopt a coordinated approach to safe re-opening and sets out steps and tools to take to achieve that common goal”. In addition to its flagship initiative to boost tourism—the ‘green certificate’ (see other news)—the European Commission has published a recommendation on wastewater monitoring and a general communication listing its intentions for the coming months. It announced a European strategy on Covid-19 treatments in mid-April to accelerate research and treatment production, and a lessons learned document in June 2021.
For its part, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has posted technical guidance on self-testing and published a document to support the lifting or re-imposition of restrictions depending on the evolution of the epidemiological situation in Member States.
Vaccination update
“If you look at the epidemiological situation, it is getting worse, with the appearance of variants, particularly the British variant. We see the crest of a third wave forming in the Member States and we know that we need to accelerate vaccination rates”, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at a special press conference.
Ms von der Leyen also took the opportunity to report on the state of vaccination campaigns in the EU, which have been somewhat lacklustre. She indicated that the EU should have received more than 100 million doses of vaccine by the end of the first quarter of 2021 (66 million from BioNTech-Pfizer, 10 million from Moderna and 30 million from AstraZeneca—the Anglo-Swedish company had committed to delivering 90 million doses). According to the President, the EU should be able to meet its commitments to vaccinate 70% of the European adult population by the summer, thanks to 300 million additional doses of vaccine in the second quarter (55 million from Johnson & Johnson, 200 million from BioNTech-Pfizer, 35 million from Moderna and 70 million from AstraZeneca—compared to the 180 million initially promised by this last).
On the distribution of these doses and the countries most in need due to AstraZeneca‘s failure to meet its commitments, the President of the Commission said she was counting on the advance of 10 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, announced the day before, to “fill the distribution gaps in the first and second quarters”. This topic was on the agenda of a videoconference between the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the leaders of Austria, Latvia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia. It should be formally discussed again at the European Council on 25-26 March.
New tools developed
In terms of today’s measures, the Commission has issued a recommendation that Member States implement wastewater monitoring “before 1 October 2021”, in particular to identify outbreaks and new variants. According to the Commission, monitoring of just 6,000 collection points allows the wastewater of 70% of the EU population to be monitored.
The text proposes minimum requirements for sampling, testing and data analysis and provides for corresponding financial support. It recommends, for example, that cities with more than 150,000 inhabitants be monitored twice a month.
The Commission also promises a common European strategy on Covid-19 therapeutics, similar to what has been done for vaccines. The aim, it states, is to accelerate research and manufacturing to ensure rapid access to useful treatments. It also announces more flexible regulatory measures for treatments, such as facilitating labelling, to enable rapid large-scale supply during the pandemic.
Finally, it undertakes to publish draft measures to enable the pooling of data collected in the context of passenger location forms (PLF) without specifying a timetable. If an exchange platform already exists, the Commission must publish a legal basis to allow the legal processing of the personal data collected. This text will define “limited and well-defined data sets to be exchanged and the roles and responsibilities of the different users”, the communication says, hoping that the text will be adopted by the summer season.
Link to the communication: https://bit.ly/3vIrQFh
Link to the recommendation on wastewater monitoring: https://bit.ly/3lmXZxg
ECDC in support
Among these tools, the ECDC is developing a framework to assist Member States in making decisions on restrictive measures. The introductory text published today, which will be translated into a digital tool available in April, defines levels reflecting the epidemiological situation (based on the number of cases and deaths—at this stage they are 14 in red). It should allow simulations to be carried out to illustrate the room for manoeuvre available to each Member State to ease the response measures without risking a reversal of the spread of the virus.
In parallel, ECDC has published technical guidance on self-tests for Covid-19, which includes details of their availability, clinical performance compared to PCR tests, implications for reporting and epidemiological surveillance, and parameters for their appropriate use.
Link to ECDC’s forward-looking approach: https://bit.ly/3tsydue
Link to technical guidance on self-testing: https://bit.ly/3tw0oZj (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)