Israel, Austria and Denmark come together to produce …

Israel, Austria and Denmark announced this Thursday an alliance to develop and produce a new generation of covid-19 vaccines, during a joint press conference of their leaders in Jerusalem.

“We don’t know how long the vaccine will be effective. Maybe six months, a year, two years, more or less, we don’t know and so we need to protect our populations from the resurgence of the pandemic or the outbreaks. mutations “, declared the Prime Minister. Israeli, Benjamin Netanyahu, during this press conference with the Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian kurz and the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen.

To this end, the three countries will create “a research and development fund” and start “joint efforts for the production of future vaccines”, added the head of the Israeli government, who did not however detail the amount allocated nor the production capacity they hope to achieve.

The three countries “are conducting promising research that will pave the way for the next generation” of biomedical development, the Danish prime minister said, saying the alliance “will explore the possibility of cooperating in clinical trials”.

France had criticized the alliance project, believing that the “European framework” was more appropriate to guarantee “solidarity” within the European Union (EU).

“We must cooperate on this file within the European Union […] But we must also cooperate on a global scale, “Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Thursday, saying Israel was” the first country in the world to show that the virus can be defeated “.

Thanks to an agreement with the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Israel enjoys rapid vaccine supply (Photo) in exchange for biomedical data on the effect of these on their population.

So far, the agreement has allowed more than half of 9.3 million Israelis have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and the performance of several large-scale tests which have confirmed, so far, the efficacy of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.

However, he has been criticized by human rights organizations for denying vaccines to Palestinians in the territories occupied by Israel in various wars and in particular in the Gaza strip.