Malta is not pursuing national emergency authorisation for a COVID-19 vaccination, the health authorities said on Wednesday, after Britain became the first Western country to approve immunisation against the virus for general use.
A spokesperson from the health ministry told Times of Malta that they would not be pursuing a similar route for widespread vaccine roll-out locally.
The authorities will be relying on a final assessment by the European Medicines Agency, which is expected by the end of December, before a vaccine is approved for general use in Malta.
More information on when people may start receiving COVID-19 vaccines locally is expected in the coming days.
On Wednesday, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by emergency use approval with roll-out of the drug expected to start next week.
We cannot make mistakes at this stage
Some 800,000 doses will be made available to Britons, with care home residents, health and care staff, the elderly and the clinically extremely vulnerable set to be given priority in receiving the vaccine.
Health Minister Chris Fearne previously announced that Malta had been allocated 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Around half of the amount had been allocated to Malta through a joint European distribution scheme. Fearne also said that the first of the frontliners and elderly scheduled to receive the jab will be given an appointment and will be provided for free by the health authorities.
The health authorities said that only approved vaccinations will be administered locally and cold storage facilities required to store the jabs have already been acquired. Vaccination will not be mandatory, however, the authorities have urged people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech on Wednesday called for the government to publish a “detailed strategy” on how a COVID-19 vaccine will be delivered in Malta.
Welcoming the news that the UK has approved Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for roll-out from next week, Grech said it was important to know how Malta will go about vaccinating.
“We cannot make mistakes at this stage,” he said.
The health spokesman for the EPP, the biggest group in the European Parliament, on Wednesday urged member states not to follow the UK’s example and grant emergency approval to Pfizer-BioNTech.
Peter Liese said: “I consider this decision to be problematic and recommend that EU member states do not repeat the process in the same way.”
Liese said that a few weeks of “thorough examination” by the European Medicines Agency is better than “a hasty emergency marketing authorisation of a vaccine”.