Health News

EU to get 40 mn more Moderna jabs in Q3: medicines agency

The EU’s medicines watchdog said on Friday that the bloc was likely to get 40 million more Moderna vaccine doses by October, after an output boost at two new US sites. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) in June gave the green light for the US sites in Massachusetts and New Hampshire to produce ingredients needed […]

Health News

EU finalizes deal with Pfizer-BioNTech for 1.8 billion doses

The European Union’s executive arm on Thursday finalized a third vaccine contract with Pfizer and BioNTech through 2023 for an additional 1.8 billion doses of their COVID-19 shot. The European commission said the deal, which was agreed on behalf of all 27 EU countries earlier this month, will allow the buying of 900 million doses […]

Health News

EU to get 50 million Pfizer doses early as Denmark scraps AZ

The EU said Wednesday that it is expecting 50 million Pfizer coronavirus vaccine doses earlier than expected, as rival drugmaker AstraZeneca faced a fresh setback after Denmark banned its use over blood clot links. The news comes after Johnson & Johnson said it would delay its European rollout, also over blood clot fears—a major hit […]

Health News

EU to get 50 mn Pfizer doses early as Denmark scraps AZ

The EU said Wednesday it would get 50 million Pfizer vaccine doses earlier than expected, as rival drugmaker AstraZeneca faced a fresh setback after Denmark banned its use over blood clot links. The news comes after Johnson & Johnson said it would delay its European rollout, a major hit for the continent’s beleaguered immunisation campaign […]

Health News

Russia says Sputnik V production deals reached in key EU states

The developers of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine said Monday they had reached production agreements in key European countries as the EU’s medical agency deliberates official approval for the Russian jab. The head of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev said in a statement that his organisation had secured “agreements with companies from Italy, […]

Health News

EU calls for regular virus tests on mink farms

Europe’s mink farms should regularly test their animals for Covid-19 and carry out sequencing until the risk of the virus spreading to humans is eliminated, two EU agencies said Thursday. The European Commission ordered the report following coronavirus outbreaks on mink farms in several European countries in 2020, with confirmed cases of the virus being […]

Health News

Politicians ‘underestimated’ virus threat: EU chief

Political leaders “underestimated” the magnitude of the danger posed by the coronavirus, the president of the European Commission admitted Wednesday, as the EU shut its borders. “I think that all of us who are not experts initially underestimated the coronavirus,” Ursula von der Leyen told Germany’s Bild newspaper in an interview published Wednesday. “But now […]

Health Problems

In first for EU, anti-skin cancer drug approved

French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi on Friday said the European Medicines Agency had conditionally approved its anti-cancer drug Libtayo, the first drug of its kind to be authorised for use in the EU. The tumour-reducing drug is aimed at patients with the second most common form of skin cancer—cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC)—whose cancer is advanced, […]