Thread by @DaveKeating

Vice President Schinas announces EU Commission is calling on member states to accelerate their vaccine roll-outs so they can vaccinate 70% of adults by summer.

That’s a long way to go. After 3 weeks of vaccinating in EU, rates range from 2.94% in Denmark to 0.28% in Bulgaria.

Vaccination *roll-outs* are the responsibility of national governments, but *procurement and supply* is being managed by the Commission.

The EMA will work with manufacturers to ramp up production capacity in Europe.
ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…

The Commission is also endorsing the idea of EU coordination on vaccine certificates.

Schinas: “A common EU approach to trusted, reliable & verifiable certificates would allow people to use airports of other member states, and open door to other uses to help ease restrictions."

EU Health chief Kyriakides says she's also looking at how to distribute the 2.3 billion EU pre-ordered doses to neighbours.

"Our vaccine strategy was never about the EU first, it was about giving a fighting chance to everyone, including our neighbours and low-income countries"

Schinas asked about concerns EMA under political pressure to authorise vaccines faster than they think is wise.

"EMA is an independent regulatory authority, & rightly so. This is way we do things in EU, decisions of this kind are in hands of independent regulatory authorities"

Both Schinas & Kyriakides have *3 times now* dodged the question of exactly when the "summer" 70% vaccination target is.

Schinas will only say that summer lasts from June to August. Seems they want to be able to fudge this target later. Reading between the lines: it's 31 August.

Since vaccinations started 3 weeks ago in the EU there have been more than 5 million doses administered.

The EU has delivered 12.3 million Pfizer doses and 650,000 Moderna doses to countries. But most aren't using all the available supply because of national rollout problems.