The European Parliament’s special committee on Covid-19 welcomed, in Brussels on Wednesday 13 July, Dr Andréa Amon, Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and Pierre Delsaux, Director General of the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), as well as experts from Greece, Belgium, France, Austria and Portugal.
Véronique Trillet-Lenoir (Renew Europe, French) informed the committee about the agreement on the regulation on serious cross-border health threats.
The ECDC has reported a new wave of Covid-19 in Europe (see EUROPE 12984/23). Dr Amon stressed that existing Covid-19 vaccines remain effective in controlling severe forms and deaths.
She said that she would like to see booster vaccination campaigns in line with the ECDC’s 11 July recommendations (see EUROPE 12990/17) now, rather than in September, when most states will have reached or passed a peak in infections and the impact of such a booster dose will be less significant. Andréa Amon claims that a vaccine adapted to new variants will be needed this autumn, at least for the vulnerable population. The hope is that in the future it will no longer be necessary to administer booster shots as regularly as at present. But SARS-CoV-2 is not yet “stabilised”.
To further improve crisis preparedness and surveillance, Dr Amon stressed that further investment and prioritisation of resources for public health would be needed.
Responding to Stelios Kympouropoulos (EPP, Greek), she announced that after assessing the level of preparedness of states, a ‘European Health Task Force’ would be set up to support states in their preparation and response to epidemics. Following a question by Karsten Lucke (S&D, German), she acknowledged that long Covid was a problem. Its characterisation still requires work.
Finally, Dr Amon called on Member States to implement sustained integrated surveillance of respiratory diseases and announced the publication, on Monday 18 July, of a joint paper on this topic with the World Health Organization as well as considerations on vaccination for the autumn.
Pierre Delsaux, who heads HERA, assured that the EU has enough doses of Covid-19 vaccine this autumn to vaccinate its population and to offer doses to third countries.
Mr Delsaux confirmed that shipments of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were rescheduled for after the summer (see EUROPE 12952/24). An agreement has been reached with Moderna to reschedule the deliveries originally planned for the second quarter into the autumn. Negotiations are underway for the deliveries originally scheduled for the third quarter. The vaccines delivered could be bivalent vaccines adapted to the new variants of concern. Vaccines that, according to Mr Delsaux, could be available after the summer. No other provisions of the contracts had been changed, Mr Delsaux said. Thus, states remain free to provide vaccines.
Regarding the advance purchase contract for vaccines with Valneva, which the Commission had wanted to see terminated, Pierre Delsaux refuted the accusations of insider trading made by Virgine Joron (ID, French), at least not by him, he said with a touch of irony. More seriously, he stressed that “Valneva is not working on a bivalent vaccine”. “HERA is assessing the situation with the Member States, we are facilitators: in the end it will be up to the Member States to decide what to do with the vaccines”, he added. Final discussions are expected to take place soon.
Sanofi‘s vaccine is not yet licenced and Hypra’s vaccine could be by the end of the summer. If Member States so wish, they may then be allowed to purchase them.
For the moment, we are in a situation where the vaccine is “chasing variants”, according to Mr Delsaux, who hopes for a future vaccine that is broadly multivariant: “it will be complicated and take time”.
Epidemiologists from five member countries, after an introduction based on questionnaires prepared with the coordinators of the different groups, exchanged views on the past situation regarding the evolution of the epidemic as well as on some projections on the new wave to come. (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)