Filenews 29 June 2021
The first portfolio of five therapeutic instruments that could soon be available for the treatment of COVID-19 patients in the EU, announced Commissioner Stella Kyriakidou.
Four of these therapeutics are monoclonal antibodies under rolling evaluation by the European Medicines Agency. Another is an immunosuppressant, which has a marketing authorisation that could be extended to include the treatment of patients with COVID-19.
The Commissioner for Health and Food Safety said that "today we are taking the first step towards a broad portfolio of therapeutics for the treatment of COVID-19".
"While vaccination is progressing at an increasing rate, the virus will not disappear and patients will need safe and effective treatments to reduce the burden of COVID-19," he added.
Our goal is clear, he noted, "we aim to identify more candidates in development and approve at least three new treatments by the end of the year. This is the European Health Union in action."
The five products are at an advanced stage of development and have great potential to be among the three new COVID-19 therapies to be approved by October 2021, the objective set under the Strategy, provided that the final evidence proves their safety, quality and effectiveness.
Furthermore, as announced by commission representative Christian Vigand yesterday, Commissioner Reynders and Commissioner Kyriakidou sent a letter to the 27 EU Member States, calling for the timely and consistent implementation of the updated recommendation on the coordination of restrictions on free movement in the EU and the EU's COVID digital certificate.
The Commission strongly encourages Member States to implement the Recommendation as soon as possible. In particular, they should ensure travel exemptions for fully vaccinated and recovered persons, ensure family unity and apply the updated colour coding of the ECDC map. This needs to be done better before 1 July to ensure that the measures are in line with the EU's COVID digital certificate.
"Of course, we must also remain vigilant about the Delta variant and also for this coordination is necessary," the spokesman stressed.
Commissioners also encourage Member States to proceed quickly with the technical development of the certificate by 1 July, in order to avoid disturbances, national authorities should remain in close contact with the various operators in the travel sector.
Finally, he stressed that they must give citizens the confidence to travel abroad this summer and that is why they need clear and timely information.
Commissioners therefore call on Ministers to provide regular updates to the EU platform, which will be an obligation under the new regulation.
In addition, as announced by the Commission today, it publishes the reports of Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Microsoft and Google on the measures taken in May against misinformation on the pandemic as signatories to the Code of Practice on Disinformation
Facebook said vaccine profile frames, launched in April to encourage people to get vaccinated, were used by more than 5 million users worldwide in May.
Twitter updated user notifications on a system based on a gradual account suspension warning to make users more aware when their Tweets are flagged or removed.
TikTok collaborated with the Italian youth ministry on a campaign to promote vaccination and reported a ten-fold increase in vaccine-tagged videos across Europe, compared to the previous month.
The Microsoft Bing COVID-19 experience prompt continues to display a detailed vaccine progress tracker when searching for relevant terms.
Google in search mode presented a list of approved vaccines, statistics and information across Europe and currently applies additional information on where to vaccinate.
