GERMANY considered fast-tracking the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for Covid-19 but did not do so because convincing people of its safety was crucial, Germany’s health minister has said.

The head of the UK medicines regulator, Dr June Raine, stressed on Wednesday that “no corners had been cut” in approving the injection.

However, Jens Spahn said Germany wanted to create confidence during the vetting process.

“The idea is not that we’re the first, but the idea is to have safe and effective vaccines in the pandemic and that we can create confidence, and nothing is more important than confidence with respect to vaccines,” he said.

“BioNTech is a European development funded by the European Union and it shows that a product from the European Union is so good that it is authorised so quickly in the UK, that in this crisis what is best is European and international cooperation.

“We have member states, including Germany, who could have issued such an emergency authorisation if we’d wanted to, but we decided against this and what we opted for was a common European approach to move forward together.”

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The developers of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine approved for use in the UK have submitted an application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for “conditional marketing authorisation”, which is currently under evaluation, along with another from Moderna Biotech, of Spain. The EMA is also conducting a rolling review of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine and one from Janssen-Cilag International.

So far, the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), has only authorised Dexamethasone for use on Covid-19 patients on ventilation.

Meanwhile, top US infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci has said the UK was not as rigorous as the US in the approval process.

He told Fox News: “The UK did not do it as carefully. If you go quickly and you do it superficially, people are not going to want to get vaccinated.”