A senior official from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has contradicted United States President Joe Biden, stating that the Chinese coronavirus pandemic is not over and expects European Union (EU) members to continue vaccine rollouts.
European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Chief Medical Officer Steffen Thirstrup spoke out on Tuesday, stating that the agency did not believe the pandemic had come to an end and that it was still needed for EU members to continue to push vaccines, particularly new vaccines adapted to new strains of the virus.
“We in Europe still consider the pandemic as ongoing and it’s important that member states prepare for rollout of the vaccines and especially the adaptive vaccines to prevent further spread of this disease in Europe,” Thirstrup said, the news agency Reuters reports.
The statement came just days after U.S. President Biden announced that the pandemic was over during an interview with the television programme 60 Minutes saying, “The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. It’s — but the pandemic is over.”
The statements provoked a flurry of criticism on social media, with progressives and leftists stating that the President had declared an end of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic prematurely, with members of Biden’s own Democratic Party, such as state representative Attica Scott, saying, “You don’t get to just declare a global pandemic over, Mr. [President].”
EMA Chief Medical Officer Thirstrup is also among Biden’s critics and reacted to a question on Biden’s declaration by saying, “I cannot obviously answer why President Biden came to that conclusion.”
For many countries in Europe, the pandemic has been largely over in all but name as very few countries still have sweeping coronavirus restrictions in place. In Austria, only the city of Vienna still requires facemasks to be worn on public transport, while the rest of the country has abandoned the restrictions.
Vaccine uptake has also plummeted in recent months since many restrictions were lifted in European countries, although countries are still rolling out new adaptive vaccines for new variants of the virus.