Four EU sources told Reuters that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has been under pressure from the European Commission and EU governments to approve vaccines more quickly. One EMA official said on Monday pressure had increased on the agency from EU governments "through usual channels of communications" after Dec 2, when the British regulator granted an emergency authorisation to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. EMA said in emailed statements to Reuters in recent days that it was not under political pressure to be faster. The EU regulator received data from Pfizer's large-scale trials on Dec. 1 and said it would decide on possible conditional approval of the vaccine by Dec. 29 "at the latest". It usually takes the agency at least seven months to approve a vaccine after it gets full data from manufacturers.

Source: bd News24 December 14, 2020 13:07 UTC