European
Union (EU) chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday that
Europe’s race to produce COVID-19 vaccine must speed up to scientific
breakthroughs and surpass emerging virus variants. She told the European
parliament, “We underestimated the difficulty related to mass production.
Normally, it takes five to 10 years to produce a new vaccine. We did it in 10
months. This is a huge scientific success, and we should be rightly proud —
but in a way, science has outstripped industry”.

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Von der Leyen, in her first public admissions to Europe, outside
of some select media interviews mentioned that her union on behalf of all EU
countries had made mistakes in acquiring vaccines, reports AFP. However, she
also justified the overall plan and said, “We were late to authorise. We
were too optimistic when it came to massive production. And perhaps we were too
confident that what we ordered would actually be delivered on time.”

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EU chief also said that if they would have permitted the
richest nations of Europe to obtain COVID-19 vaccines for themselves and leave
other nations then it “would have been, I think, the end of our community”.

These were some lessons which her union will definitely learn, added von der
Leyen.

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This will include acquiring more data shared between EU
countries’ clinics, enhancing rules to permit the European Medicines Agency to
move faster in approving vaccines and clearing industrial restrictions for
production of vaccines, reported AFP.

She also hinted that European scientists are unaware of the
vaccines will be efficacious or not against the emerging coronavirus’ new
mutant strain.