MEPs from the COVI Committee (Special Committee on the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons learned and recommendations for the future) exchange with Stella KYRIAKIDES, Commissioner for Health, Food and Safety Commissioner on new regulation on cross-border threats to health, a new EU network of reference laboratories, the long-Covid side effects and the transparency around vaccines contracts. In a second part, they exchange with Emer COOKE, Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency on the recommendations to strengthen EMA’s response to future public health emergencies. Extracts.

exchange of views

VAN BREMPT, Kathleen (S&D, BE)

KYRIAKIDES, Stella (CY, EC)

COOKE, Emer (IE)

EU's response to covid-19 (T)

Special Committee COVID-19 pandemic: lessons learned and recommendations for the future

Exchange of views with Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety and with Emer COOKE, Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA): extracts - COVI Committee

SOUNDBITE (English), Kathleen VAN BREMPT (S&amp;D, BE), Chair of COVI Special Committee, Our request to you today,but many people will take the floor as well, is of course to look where do we stand now at the end, after a year, all the things that have been put in place. But also partly also an evaluation, think of HERA and how to look at the future of HERA, but also the international treaty on the pandemic will be an important part.

Arrival of Stella KYRIAKIDES and Kathleen VAN BREMPT to the COVI meeting (4 shots)

SOUNDBITE (English), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, There's a lot of work going on to implement the new regulation on cross-border threats to health and the extended mandate of ECDC. We are working on a roll out of EU prevention and preparedness and response plan and the national plans will have to align to this. And this EU level plan should be ready by the end of this year.

SOUNDBITE (English), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, We are also now working on an EU network of reference laboratories so that member states can better cooperate at their level on cross-border regional threats. We are strengthening the EU system for early warning and response, including through digitalisation.

SOUNDBITE (English), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, The Commission is working with the manufacturers to better align supply and demand for the vaccines. I want to share with you that a number of agreements have already been reached and discussions with Bio'n'tech-Pfizer are ongoing to find a solution to significantly reduce the amount of doses to be delivered and expand the contracts timeframe beyond 2023.

SOUNDBITE (English), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, A lot of progress has been made in understanding long-covid, but we need more answers on the causes and on the effective treatments. So what we are doing now and what we have done, we are creating a network of national experts under the EU health policy platform to bring all the knowledge together and address challenges related to it.

SOUNDBITE (English), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, I would like to understand why do direct representatives of the citizens are blocked to understanding better how this contract was made beyond redacted versions?

SOUNDBITE (English), Emer COOKE, Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), We now have a mandate for our emergency task force and part of the mandate includes a responsibility to coordinate clinical trials in emergency situations. But there is more work to be done and for this reason we are investing in a new initiative together with the Commission and the Member States called Accelerating Clinical Trials in the EU.

SOUNDBITE (English), Emer COOKE, Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), We need to be able to increase our scientific assessment capacity very quickly, maybe by building up a reserve of assessors for crisis situations.

SOUNDBITE (English), Emer COOKE, Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), We are working with patient groups and developers to better understand long COVID so that we can support the development and authorisation of possible treatment approaches.

SOUNDBITE (English), Emer COOKE, Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), We put in place a working group with single points of contact of in each of the member states to really figure out what's happening on the ground with which shortages that could become a potential crisis.

SOUNDBITE (English), Emer COOKE, Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), We're asking the companies, to notify us in advance. We don't have a fixed notification time, but as soon as they think there might be a shortage to let us know, because that helps us plan, helps us distribute the the medicines across Europe.