The long awaited day has come. After Great Britain, Canada and the USA, too the European Union gives the green light to the Pfizer Biontech vaccine. The EMA, the European Medicines Agency has given the conditional ok to the US company's anti-Covid serum. This was announced by Marie-Agnes Heine, director of communication of the institution. Expected for tonight the authorization to place the vaccine on the market by the European Commission.
The first doses of the vaccine will leave Belgium on Christmas Eve and will arrive at the Spallanzani in Rome on December 26 for distribution throughout the country. V-day, as announced a few days ago by the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is scheduled for December 27th.
"It is a decisive moment in our efforts to deliver safe and effective vaccines to Europeans! The EMA has just issued a positive scientific opinion on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Now we will act quickly,” he tweeted. von der Leyen.
"It is the news we have been waiting for,” said the Minister of HealthRobert Speranza. “The battle against the virus is still very complex, as demonstrated by the latest news from London, but having an effective and safe vaccine available opens a new phase and gives us more strength and confidence”.
The executive director of the EMA, Emer Cooke, also spoke about the new variant of Covid-19 discovered in the UK. “There is currently no evidence to suggest that the new vaccine will not work on the new strain of the coronavirus,” Cooke reassured. “We know much more about this vaccine than we did ten months ago and even three months ago, but there is still new information that needs to be evaluated in its entirety, such as recent information on the new coronavirus variant that still needs to be evaluated.”
Sabine Straus, president of the EMA's safety committee, instead referred to the possible side effects which “are the same as those found on other vaccines”, Straus. In detail, the most frequent ones are "pain during the injection, tiredness, headache, pain in muscles and ligaments, high fever", but "the side effects last about a day". However, the expert recommended "an important monitoring action" to the health authorities on the effects found.
