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March 11 (Reuters) - The European Union's drugs regulator on
Thursday recommended conditionally approving Johnson & Johnson's
single dose COVID-19 vaccine, as the bloc seeks to speed
up a stuttering inoculation campaign and boost its supplies of
vaccines.
The COVID-19 shot is the fourth to be endorsed for use in
the EU after vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech ,
AstraZeneca-Oxford University and Moderna, and
is recommended for those over 18 years of age, the European
Medicines agency (EMA) said.
The United States, Canada and Bahrain have also approved the
shot. South Africa is carrying out an expedited review.
"With this latest positive opinion, authorities across the
European Union will have another option to combat the pandemic
and protect the lives and health of their citizens," EMA's
Executive Director Emer Cooke said.
"This is the first vaccine that can be used as a single
dose."
EU conditional marketing authorisation allows a treatment to
be sold for a year without full data on its efficacy and
side-effects being available.
The region is having difficulty taming a spike cases driven
by a more contagious variant of the coronavirus, with countries
including Italy and France imposing fresh lockdowns.
(Reporting by Muvija M and Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru;
additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing
by Josephine Mason, Mark Potter and Kevin Liffey
)
Astrazeneca (AZN)