The European Commission has granted a conditional marketing authorisation (CMA) for the COVID‑19 vaccine developed by Moderna, the second COVID-19 vaccine authorised in the EU. This authorisation follows a positive scientific recommendation based on a thorough assessment of the safety, effectiveness and quality of the vaccine by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and is endorsed […]
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European Commission authorises first safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19
The European Commission has granted a conditional marketing authorisation (CMA) for the COVID‑19 vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer, making it the first COVID-19 vaccine authorised in the EU. This authorisation follows a positive scientific recommendation based on a thorough assessment of the safety, effectiveness and quality of the vaccine by the European Medicines Agency […]
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The Council and the European Parliament agree provisionally on the EU4Health programme for 2021-2027
The German presidency of the Council and the European Parliament reached a provisional deal on the EU4Health programme for 2021-2027. With a budget of EUR 5.1 billion, the new reinforced programme provides a strong basis for Union action in the health field based on lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. It comes at a time […]
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Waging war against SARS-CoV-2 with Europe’s most powerful supercomputers
Searching for new COVID-19 treatments, an EU-funded project conducted a supercomputing experiment to study the interaction of over 70 billion antiviral molecules with SARS-CoV-2 proteins. A huge molecular computation experiment was recently conducted to identify new treatments against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Run by the EU-funded EXSCALATE4CoV project, the experiment is believed to be the most […]
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The EU will begin vaccination on December 27
The EU will begin vaccination on December 27. This is what the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has assured on her Twitter account: It’s Europe’s moment. On 27, 28 and 29 December vaccination will start across the EU. We protect our citizens together. We are #StrongerTogether#EUvaccinationdays pic.twitter.com/6VxDumysBL — Ursula von der […]
Read MoreCommission approves contract with Moderna to ensure access to a potential vaccine
The European Commission approved a sixth contract under the EU Vaccines Strategy, this time with the pharmaceutical company Moderna. The contract provides for the initial purchase of 80 million doses on behalf of all EU Member States, plus an option to request up to a further 80 million doses, to be supplied once a vaccine […]
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16.8 million European funds advanced to Spain to fight the pandemic
Seven EU Member States, including Spain, will receive advance payments from the Solidarity Fund to mitigate the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. Aid from the Solidarity Fund Germany, Ireland, Greece, Croatia, Hungary and Portugal will also receive advances to cope with the health emergency On Monday, Budgets Committee Members approved €823 million in EU aid […]
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How the pandemic has changed forever the way we teach
This year’s global pandemic exposed as never before the urgent need to revolutionise teacher training as skills centres and vocational education and training schools were closed around the world, forcing a sudden switch to online learning. Countries that had already started investing heavily online and blended education (where digitally-based distance learning is combined with practical […]
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Health threats: boosting EU readiness and crisis management
New EU programme EU4Health aims to strengthen Europe’s health systems to respond better to future major cross-border crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. The Covid-19 outbreak has shown the need for EU countries to better cooperate and coordinate in times of crisis and to strengthen the EU’s capacity to respond effectively to new cross-border health threats. Drawing […]
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