Marco Cavaleri

The European Medicines Agency said Thursday a coronavirus variant known as "Mu" could be cause for concern, although there is no data yet to show it will overtake the dominant Delta strain, AFP reported. Mu, which was first identified in Colombia in January and is known scientifically as B.1.621, was classified earlier this month as a "variant of interest" by the WHO.

A top official in the European Medicines Agency said it might be worth abandoning AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine for all age groups where alternatives are available, in an interview published on June 13.

Marco Cavaleri, the EMA's head of vaccine strategy, also told Italy's La Stampa newspaper that the Johnson & Johnson jab should be preferentially used for the over 60s.

The EU's drug watchdog on May 28 approved the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus jab for 12 to 15-year-olds, the first vaccine to get the green light for children in the bloc.

The vaccine was "well tolerated" in adolescents and there were no "major concerns" in terms of side effects, the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency said.

A senior official at Europe's medicines regulator has said there is a clear "association" between AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine and very rare blood clots in the brain, though the direct cause of the clots is still unknown.

EMA head of vaccines Marco Cavaleri told Italy’s Il Messaggero newspaper

Europe's medicines regulator is planning to speed up assessments of any Covid-19 vaccines that are modified to protect against variants of the virus, the head of the agency's Covid-19 task-force told Reuters on Friday.