EU vaccine approval ‘too slow’: Austrian chancellor

VIENNA: Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Monday criticised the EU’s medicine regulator for being “too slow” in approving coronavirus vaccines as he outlined plans to co-ordinate more closely with Israel on inoculations.

Kurz said in a statement that while the EU’s common procurement and licensing policy for vaccines was “right in principle”, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) “is too slow in approving vaccines and there have been supply bottlenecks at manufacturers”.

He said that in order to prepare for possible mutations of the coronavirus and to develop “second generation” vaccines, “we should not be solely dependent on the EU anymore”.—AFP