Germany’s health minister urges EU to approve vaccine faster

BERLIN — Germany’s health minister demanded that the European Union’s regulatory agency work faster to approve a coronavirus vaccine and bring an end to the suffering on the continent, but the head of the agency said Monday that his team is already working “around the clock.”

Other German officials suggested that residents should forgo Christmas shopping and attend Christmas Mass online as a new lockdown loomed that will close schools and most stores.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and the governors of Germany’s 16 states agreed Sunday to step up the country’s lockdown measures beginning Wednesday and running to Jan. 10 to stop the exponential rise of COVID-19 cases. Germany has been hitting records of new daily infections and virus deaths in recent weeks, and Merkel said exisiting restrictions imposed in November had failed to halt the rise in new infections.

Expressing impatience, Health Minister Jens Spahn said in tweets late Sunday that Germany, which has created more than 400 vaccination centers and has activated about 10,000 doctors and medical staff to start mass vaccinations as early as today, was hamstrung by the lack of regulatory approval.

It was especially galling because the vaccine developed by Germany’s BioNTech and American drugmaker Pfizer has been authorized for use in Britain, the United States, Canada and other countries. But it’s still waiting for approval by the European Medicines Agency, or EMA, and can therefore not be used in Germany yet or in any of the EU’s 27 nations.