Under a fast track procedure, European regulators are evaluating early data from a coronavirus vaccine being developed by Germany’s BioNTech and US giant Pfizer, the firm informed on Tuesday.

The ‘rolling review’, which is used to speed up assessments of promising drugs or vaccines during a public health emergency, is the second being conducted by the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) after it already agreed to evaluate a possible COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca and Britain’s Oxford University.

This will allow the EMA to review data of pharma companies as it comes in, even while trials are still ongoing.

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“It is our duty to ensure that while we are working to develop a potential vaccine at unprecedented speed to help address this pandemic, we do so with the highest ethical standards while adhering to sound scientific principles,” BioNTech CEO and co-founder Ugur Sahin said in a statement.

“We will continue to have a regular and open dialogue with the EMA throughout the rolling review process,” he added.

The potential BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine is one of nine vaccine candidates to have advanced to late-stage human trials, known as phase 3 clinical trials when they are tested on thousands of volunteers.

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However, the EMA has said in a separate statement that the decision to start an accelerated review “does not mean that a conclusion can be reached yet on the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness, as much of the evidence is still to be submitted”.

BioNTech has previously said it aims to supply up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.