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| - Leaders from Israel, Austria and Denmark announced Thursday an alliance for the development and production of future generation coronavirus vaccines, at a press conference in Jerusalem. The three countries will launch "a research and development fund" and begin "joint efforts for common production of future vaccines", Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, alongside his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. "We don't know how long... (current coronavirus) vaccines will hold up," Netanyahu added. "Is it half a year, is it a year, is it two years, is it more, is it less? We don't know. Therefore we have to protect our people against the reemergence of this pandemic, or mutations." He did not specify the fund amount or the production capacity goal. Frederiksen said the three countries "all have promising research that could pave the way for (a) next generation platform", adding they "would like also to explore possible cooperation on clinical trials". Denmark and Austria are European Union members, and the Israeli partnership has elicited criticism from fellow EU state France, which said the European system remained the best way to guarantee "solidarity" within the bloc. Kurz had announced the alliance on Monday, saying the European Medicines Agency (EMA) was "too slow in approving vaccines", leaving the bloc vulnerable to supply bottlenecks at pharmaceutical companies. But France's foreign ministry defended the agency and insisted that "the most effective solution for meeting our vaccination needs must remain within a European framework". "This is what guarantees the solidarity among member states that is more essential than ever," France said in a statement late Wednesday. But Kurz on Thursday said: "We need to cooperate on this issue within the European Union... but we also need to cooperate worldwide." He added that "Israel is the first country in the world to show that it is possible to defeat the virus". Israel, among the world leaders in Covid-19 vaccinations per capita, launched a massive inoculation operation in December, backed by a deal with US pharma giant Pfizer, which mounted an airlift of its vaccine developed with German firm BioNTech in exchange for biomedical data on its effects. The Jewish state has so far administered at least one of two recommended doses to more than half of the country's nine million-strong population, and led a series of large-scale trials that have so far confirmed the efficacy of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. gl/sw/pjm
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