Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1335955
2 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 3 FEBRUARY 2021 NEWS 141 new cases of COVID-19 were registered on Tuesday, the health ministry said yesterday. 132 new recoveries were registered, bringing the number of active cases to 2,665. 29,002 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered until Sunday, of which 4,476 were second doses. Total recoveries stand at 15,233 while total cas- es registered stand at 18,168. One person died while infected with COVID-19 in the last 24-hours. The victim was a 92-year- old woman, at Good Samaritan Long Term Care Facility. The total number of deaths is 270. 2,836 swab tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of swabs to 618,453. COVID-19 One death and 141 new cases THE European Union has vac- cinated more than 12 million citizens, the European Com- mission's Director-General for Health said on Monday. Sandra Gallina was facing questioning by members of the European Parliament's Budget Committee on vaccine avail- ability and the use of the EU budget. She explained what the Com- mission is doing to obtain enough vaccines to reach its objective of having 70% of the EU's adult population inoculat- ed by the summer. "Contracts have to be negoti- ated rapidly with liability and indemnification being of par- amount importance," Gallina said. "The EU has gone beyond the 12-million-vaccinations mark and there is no need to envy the US or Israel". Committee Chair Johan Van Overtveldt (ECR, BE) said that MEPs "did their duty", by adopting the Emergency Sup- port Instrument in April and managing to triple the EU- 4Health and boost the Horizon Europe research programmes in the negotiations on the EU long-term budget for 2021- 2027. MEPs asked for the contracts with Astra Zeneca and others to be more transparent, espe- cially on how funds from the EU budget are used and dis- tributed, and how much money is coming from member states. The deals with the phar- maceutical companies are of "overriding public interest" and should therefore be dis- closed, they said. Some MEPs demanded that €1.5 billion of unused funds from the research programme and the EU budget margins be used to improve the vaccina- tion rollout in the EU. Gallina maintained that this money should be spent on tackling variants of COVID-19, and that the problem is linked to production rather than the number of doses ordered. She said she was relying on a breakthrough in the second quarter of 2021 and on compa- nies whose vaccines are not yet registered – as well as on a sec- ond contract with BioNTech – to reach the Commission's vaccination objective. 'No need to envy US's and Israel's vaccine roll-out,' EU health chief says The Eureopan Commission's Director-General for Health says the EU does not need to envy the US's or Israel's COVID-19 vaccine rollout, having already administered the vaccination to over 12 million EU citizens Sandra Gallina, the European Commission's Director-General for Health