The European Commission on Tuesday called on member-states to accelerate the roll-out of vaccination against COVID-19 so that by summer at least 70% of the adult population is vaccinated. 

“Vaccination is essential to get out of this crisis. We have already secured enough vaccines for the entire population of the European Union. Now we need to accelerate the delivery and speed up vaccination,” EC President Ursula von der Leyen said.

She noted that the pandemic will end when everyone in the world has access to vaccines and promised that the EU will step up efforts to help secure vaccines for its neighbours and partners worldwide.

Two days ahead of a meeting of European leaders on a coordinated response to the COVID-19 crisis, the Commission set out a number of actions needed to step up the fight against the pandemic.

The EC calls on member-states to accelerate the roll-out of vaccination across the EU so that by March 2021, at least 80% of people over the age of 80, and 80% of health and social care professionals in every member state are vaccinated. And by summer 2021, member-states should have vaccinated a minimum of 70% of the adult population.

The Commission also calls on member-states to continue to apply physical distancing, limit social contacts, fight disinformation, coordinate travel restrictions, ramp up testing, and increase contact tracing and genome sequencing to face up to the risk from new variants of the virus.

The Commission is working with member-states on vaccination certificates, in full compliance with EU data protection law. A common approach is to be agreed on by the end of January 2021 to allow member-states’ certificates to be rapidly usable in health systems across the EU and beyond, the EC says.

It also recommends that all non-essential travel be strongly discouraged until the epidemiological situation has improved considerably.