Stella Kyriakides

US firm Johnson & Johnson is likely to apply for EU approval for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate in February, a top lawmaker said on Wednesday.

Clinical data of the vaccine, which Johnson & Johnson is developing through its subsidiary Janssen, have been assessed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) since Dec. 1 under a rolling review to speed up possible approval.

Today, the European Commission has reached a first agreement with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to purchase a potential vaccine against COVID-19 as well as to donate to lower and middle income countries or re-direct to other European countries.

Today, the Commission has published guidance to ensure that clinical trials can continue taking place in the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to mitigate the disruption of clinical research in Europe and therefore the negative effects of the pandemic, without compromising on quality and safety.

"We have adopted new rules to allow faster and less expensive conformity assessment procedure for medical equipment and products. The new rules also apply to products which are instrumental in tackling the coronavirus crisis," the European Commission announced in a tweet.

European Union countries should coordinate their responses to the outbreak of the coronavirus to avoid diverging approaches, the EU's Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides told reporters.

European Union health ministers met in Brussels on Thursday for an emergency summit to discuss a coordinated response to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. Greece's Vassilis Kikilias recommended a digital platform that would allow member-states' crisis management authorities to exchange information related to the health scare in real time.

Stella Kyriakides from Cyprus, was elected President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

She will be the 30th President of PACE since 1949, the first Cypriot, and the third woman to take up the post.