On Wednesday 4 September, the EU Court of Auditors found that, within the limits of their respective competences and capacities, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) “generally managed their response to the Covid-19 crisis well”.
“However, there is still room for improvement in specific areas” reads the conclusions of the Court’s report on the EU’s response to the pandemic.
The Commission and the agencies are currently implementing the lessons learned from the pandemic, but it is too early to say whether this will be sufficient to prepare them properly for future public health emergencies, according to the auditors.
The Court of Auditors found that both the ECDC and the EMA had developed detailed public health contingency plans, but that under the applicable legal and financial framework, these did not address the issue of capacity building in the event of a severe and prolonged pandemic.
Shortcomings identified. In the weeks following China’s report of the first cases of the new coronavirus, “ECDC underestimated the seriousness of the situation”, according to the report. On the basis of newly available evidence, the Centre subsequently revised its assessment. The guidance and assistance provided to Member States was not always timely.
The ECDC did begin collecting data on the pandemic, but the number of infections reported depended heavily on the screening strategies of the different Member States. This was also the case for the attribution or non-attribution of deaths to Covid-19. According to the Court’s auditors, more reliable techniques, such as the analysis of virus concentrations in wastewater, could have been used to a greater extent.
With the support of the Commission, the EMA has taken advantage of regulatory flexibility to speed up the assessment procedure for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. The EMA has also stepped up its surveillance of Covid-19 medicines and acted swiftly when major potential side effects were discovered. “However, its efforts to proactively promote larger clinical trials at EU level have been less successful”, the auditors said.
The Commission has adopted a series of decisions which have filled certain gaps in the EU’s capacity to respond to health emergencies. The creation of a new Commission Directorate-General (the Health Emergency Response and Preparedness Authority, HERA), whose responsibilities partly overlap with those of the ECDC and the EMA, requires greater coordination. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)