A first step towards the end of the Covid pandemic? The European Medicines Agency has just authorized this Monday, December 21, Pfizer’s vaccine in the European Union.

The Amsterdam-based MEA had brought forward by a week the meeting initially scheduled for December 29, during which it was to announce its decision. Germany and other countries pushed for a quick decision.

“I am delighted to announce that the AEM Scientific Committee has met today and supported a conditional marketing authorization in the EU for the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech” , AEM CEO Emer Cooke said during an online press conference.

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“A historic scientific success”

“Our scientific opinion paves the way for the first marketing authorization in the EU”, she said, specifying that the authorization must cover all the 27 Member States of the European Union.

“This is an important step forward in the fight against this pandemic which is the source of suffering and hardship,” she said. “This is really a historic scientific achievement, in less than a year, a vaccine will have been developed and authorized against this disease.”

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Authorizations in other countries

Calls for swift action had multiplied after the United Kingdom and the United States granted emergency authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, developed by the American giant Pfizer and the German company BioNTech.

Emer Cooke added on December 21 that there is so far “no evidence” to say that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would not protect against the new strain of the coronavirus, reported mainly in the United Kingdom.