COVID-19 Coronavirus: Von der Leyen, “700 million vaccines in 2021”. 27 leaders to hold extraordinary summit tomorrow

A “collective effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic”: faced with a spike in the number of cases, the EU tries to step up its joint response to the coronavirus. Tomorrow, the heads of state and government of the 27 Member States will hold a virtual meeting to tackle the health emergency that is triggering an economic crisis and is likely to have disastrous social consequences in the coming months. Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has today presented an additional set of “actions to help limit the spread of the coronavirus, save lives and strengthen the internal market’s resilience”. Since “the COVID-19 situation is very serious”, “we must step up our EU response”, Von der Leyen said. Among other things, there is a need to substantially increase testing to identify new infections and to improve preparation for large-scale vaccination campaigns. “In the best-case scenario”, under current deals with pharmaceutical companies for the production and purchase of vaccines, “20 to 50 million doses a month could be provided, as soon as the first companies are ready. If all our vaccine candidates are successful, we could have 1.220 billion doses in 2021”. This number, however, according to the Commission’s forecast, means at least 700 million people could be vaccinated in 2021.
Gianni Borsa