First alert on vaccines. It comes from the head of Biontech, Uğur Şhin, who warned that if other vaccines against the coronavirus are not approved immediately in Europe, his company alone will not be able to cover the needs. “The situation is not good. A gap has arisen because no other vaccines have been approved and we have to cover the hole with ours,” he explained in an interview with the German weekly Spiegel. And immediately the German health minister, Jens Spahn, urged the EMA to also quickly approve the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca but the timing for the latter's approval remains uncertain.
“We are trying to have new partners who produce for us – Sahin explains again – but it is not that there are specialized factories that are not used around the world that can produce vaccines of the required quality overnight. By the end of January – she continued – we will have a clearer view whether we can produce more and how much. You cannot simply change, produce vaccines instead of aspirin or cough syrup, this process requires years of experience and an appropriate structural and technological equipment".
Biontech-Pfizer vaccine actually got just before Christmas approval by the European Commission which thus kicked off the vaccination campaign in all EU countries. But the same did not happen for example for the serum of AstraZeneca, which received the go-ahead only in the UK, or for that of Moderna. "There was the idea that many other companies would arrive with vaccines, apparently there was the impression that we were producing enough of them, that the thing would be under control" Sahin said again who did not hide his "surprise ”.
