The European Commission has said that it was considering emergency approvals for Covid-19 vaccines as a faster alternative to more rigorous conditional marketing authorisations, which have been used so far.
The move would mark a big shift in approach to vaccine approvals, as it would entail using a procedure that the EU had considered dangerous and that before the Covid-19 pandemic had been reserved for exceptional authorisation at national level of drugs for terminally ill patients, including cancer treatments.
The potential change comes as the EU executive and the bloc's drug regulator come under increasing pressure for what some consider slow vaccine approvals, which have contributed to a slower rollout of Covid-19 shots in the