EU steps up fight against COVID-19 variants

Funding will increase for specialized tests, genomic sequencing and data

The European Union is pouring resources into a program to combat swiftly-spreading COVID-19 variants, as it lags behind much of the developed world in terms of vaccine coverage.

The new European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority Incubator, or HERA Incubator for short, involves 215 million euros ($260 million) of initial funding as well as a commitment to more quickly approve vaccines adapted to tackle mutated strains.

The EU leadership has admitted that early vaccine rollout was fumbled in the bloc, where slow approval of treatments was compounded by delayed orders and manufacturing issues. Just under 5 percent of EU citizens have received a jab, whereas the United Kingdom, which recently left the bloc, has inoculated more than a fifth of its population and vaccination frontrunner Israel has treated around 40 percent of its citizens at least once.

The HERA Incubator will aim to address previous shortcomings and ensure that Europe will not be caught out if and when novel coronavirus variants develop resistance to current vaccines.

"New variants of the virus are emerging fast and we must adapt our response even faster," said Ursula von der Leyen, who is president of the European Commission. "To stay ahead of the curve, we are launching today the HERA Incubator. It brings together science, industry and public authorities, and pulls all available resources to enable us to respond to this challenge."

Last week von der Leyen said that the EU had been "late to authorize" vaccines. "We were too optimistic when it came to massive production, and perhaps too confident that what we ordered would actually be delivered on time," she told the European Parliament.

The EU says that the funding will go toward developing specialized tests for new variants as well as genomic sequencing and other research and data exchange regarding mutated strains.

Part of this research will involve sequencing a target 5 percent of positive COVID-19 tests in order to identify and monitor the spread of variants in populations, and screen their impact on transmissibility.

The bloc is also launching the VACCELERATE clinical trial network, which is a project that will accelerate COVID-19 phase 2 and 3 vaccine trials.

While lockdown measures have led to a decline in the overall number of cases in much of Europe, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, or ECDC, said that the number and proportion of positive tests for some COVID-19 variants, including the variant that was first identified in the UK, known as B.1.1.7, have been on the rise in Europe since late January.

"According to PCR-based screening and whole genome sequencing, the proportion of cases caused by B.1.1.7 has risen in recent weeks and is now very high in some EU countries, indicating that community transmission is ongoing in many, if not all, EU countries," the ECDC said on Wednesday.

The B.1.1.7 strain accounted for three quarters of all positive tests taken in Ireland since January 21, and is also spreading widely in Portugal (45 percent), the Netherlands (30 percent), Denmark (27 percent), Italy (17.8 percent) and France (13.2 percent).