The head of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has said Covid-19 vaccines will continue to provide protection against new variants.
Emer Cooke said it could take between three and four months for EMA approval for any vaccines that are adjusted to tackle the Omicron variant.
She also told the European Parliament that countries with much lower rates of Covid vaccinations had higher rates of death. Ms Cooke told MEPs that "in Ireland, where vaccination rates are among the highest in Europe at 93% of the adult population, the deaths per 1 million population over the last 14 days were 15. "But in two other European countries with vaccination rates of less than 50% the equivalent death rates were over 250 per 1 million of the population." She