On 22 December ECDC released the technical report titled ‘COVID-19 vaccination and prioritisation strategies in the EU/EEA’, following the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommendation for authorisation of the vaccine Comirnaty, developed by BioNTech and Pfizer.

The authors review some of the different systems that are used for assessing vaccination coverage within and outside the EU in order to explore the need for improving vaccination coverage data quality.

The study design and analysis controlled for influence of potentially confounding trends, such as improvement of day-care carriage and decreasing prevalence of smoking during the study period.

The role of doctors and healthcare workers in direct contact with parents and children is paramount," said ECDC Director Dr. Marc Sprenger at the World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany.

Today, ECDC publishes an update to its 2008 Guidance on human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines in Europe. The update follows the introduction of vaccination programmes in 19 European countries and new evidence from research studies over the past four years.

Vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 disease are well under way in all EU/EEA countries, and more detailed information is now available on the ECDC website.